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THE 


POWER OF THE DOG 


BY 

ROWLAND GREY 

Author of “ The Story of Chris, In Sunny Switzerland," 
^^By Virtue of His Office," Linden Blumen," 
Jacobs Letters," etc. 


“ Deliver my soul from the sword: my darling 


from the power of the-ddfi:.— xxii. 


APR 6 1896 




NEW YORK: 

i»: THE INTERNATIONAL NEWS COMPANY 

'• I 


1896 





%'1'i 

i^^pi 




THE POWER OP THE DOG 


( 



1 


THE 


POWER OF THE DOG 


BY 

ROWLAND 


GREY 

I 


Author of “ The Story of Chris,'’' In Sunny Switzerland," 
By Virtue of His Office," Linden Blumen," 
Jacob's Letters," etc. 





“ Deliver my soul from the sword: my darling 
from the power of the dog . — Psalm xxii. 


rr f ’'•v. 
''‘t’A- - . 


i APR 6 1R5R' 


NEW Y0RK^:Y 




h3^ 


THE INTERNATIONAL NEWS COMPANY 

1896 






Copyrighted, 1896 , by 

THE INTERNATIONAL NEWS COMPANY. 




CONTENTS 




CHAPTER PAGE 

I.— Man and Wipe 7 

II.— Painter, not Artist, 27 

III. — The Vicarage, 48 

IV. — A Fresh Page, 68 

V.— Triples, 89 

VI.— The Picture, 110 

VII.— The Beginning op Trouble, .... 130 

VIII.— “Thy Pleasurable Aspect,” . . . .147 

IX.— A Double Event, 164 

X.— Sunshine and Shadow, 179 

XI.— The Cup op Circe, 197 

XII.— Man Proposes, 211 

XIII. —Impotence, 230 

XIV. — CONPIDENCES, 244 

XV.— “The Interregnum,” 259 

XVI.— The Beginning op the End, .... 270 

XVII.— Darkness and Dawn, 284 



THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


CHAPTER I. 

MAN AND WIFE. 

SUNNY June afternoon in an ideal English 
garden. It was not too hot for a chorus of 
birds to be singing their hearts out to the mur- 
murous accompaniment of an orchestra of humming 
insects. A sky like that of Italy itself, only that the 
depths of tender blue seemed nearer. The thick foli- 
age of the surrounding trees was at that exquisite 
moment, between late spring and full summer, before 
the thousand delicate shades have become merged 
into one prevailing tone of luxuriant verdure. 

Allaronde was quite a modern house, for all its 
picturesqueness. But Nature had planted the garden 
and had made it beautiful for her own pleasure, gen- 
erations before a successful man had chosen the copse 
for a building site. Near the house there were close- 

trimmed lawns and carpet bedding. There were also 
7 



8 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


long borders gay with poppies, columbines, tall iris, 
and countless other flowers. The rose banks were 
glorious with gold, and crimson, and shell-pink blos- 
soms. Tall syringas, massed with fast-falling bloom, 
stood up ivory -pale, Ailing the air with dreamy fra- 
grance. 

Only a little distance beyond, and Nature reasserted 
herself in a bosky woodland half-paved with pine- 
needles. There the bracken that had newly uncurled 
its tight brown whorls made an incomparable back- 
ground for the graceful foxgloves, all the statelier 
for the shade. The syringa itself was not sweeter 
than the honeysuckles flinging their luxuriant masses 
round the tree- trunks. That there are many gardens 
such as this in England is enough to keep us patri- 
otic. They have an appealing charm that is pecul- 
iarly their own, and which is unique. 

It did not much matter now how Arthur Farrant’s 
grandfather had become wealthy enough to leave his 
son a large fortune. Except quite in the country, 
where the county still holds an enfeebled sway, ques- 
tions of this kind are not asked as they once were. 
Two generations of education and idleness left him 
a satisfactory example of an English gentleman. In 
the rapid present day it is a long time. 

His mother had died when he was born ; but she 
had been a lady and a beauty, and had left him an 


MAN AND WIFE. 


9 


inheritance of many good qualities. Shortly after- 
ward his father died also. 

At twenty-four Arthur Farrant seemed sufficiently 
enviable. Rich, young, and handsome, he still lived 
in Allaronde, his father’s house, where, within four- 
teen miles of the London of which in his own way 
he was fond, he might live the country life he liked 
best. He planned for the coming years as we all do 
till fate intervenes to show us we are powerless. 

Three years later he met Philippa Fane. His was 
one of those natures which are slow to move, but the 
quiet yet intense passion for this woman speedily 
altered the whole course of his life. Tired of pov- 
erty, Philippa accepted him, finding a certain relief 
in his very tranquillity from her own stormy emo- 
tions. She was judged hardly by the men she had 
hurt and the women she had outrivalled. That she 
should love Arthur Farrant those who knew her best 
pronounced to be impossible. It was said pretty 
openly that she would throw him over in a moment 
if better things offered. 

She soon had a chance of proving that she was not 
quite what people thought her. A few weeks before 
the marriage an accident in the hunting-field con- 
demned the active man of movement to be an invalid 
for the rest of his daj^s. He might live for years, 
but he would never stand again. 


10 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Philippa was not heartless, though she did not love 
him. When the news came, with a few pencilled 
lines, in which the heart-break showed through the 
words he strove to make resigned, a new sensation 
made her imagine that the love, the reality of which 
she had doubted, had come to her. She too was an 
orphan, eating- the bitter bread of dependence on un- 
congenial relations, in spite of her long line of an- 
cestors, her magnificent figure, her dark eyes, her 
brilliant intellect. 

She asked no counsel in her emergency ; there was 
no wise voice to whisper to her that in obeying a 
noble-seeming impulse she might be ruining two 
lives. She acted after reflection that was almost 
momentary. She hastened to the side of the man 
who, for the first time in his careless days, was pray- 
ing blindly for help, and, with a sense of exaltation 
and triumph that surprised herself, she married him. 

He was slow to consent to this sacrifice of her 
youth, but she argued that she was alone and hated 
the life she led, and, in the belief that he would not 
be with her long to hamper her, he yielded to the 
temptation. He was blamed severely enough, but 
he had never particularly troubled himself as to the 
opinion of Society. It was probably one of the rea- 
sons why he had been happy. There is nothing more 
blighting than to take as a watchword for conduct 


MAN AND WIFE. 


11 


the question, “What will the world think?” It is 
so apt to arrive at entirely erroneous conclusions. 

They had not been altogether unhappy through 
the five years the curious union had lasted. Philippa 
had born a brave face to the world. If she was dis- 
appointed, disillusioned, she did not show it. If the 
Arthur who seemed almost content with his helpless- 
ness was different from the pale bridegroom of their 
solemn wedding, she did not repine. Sometimes she 
almost doubted if the placid, uncomplaining invalid 
really loved her very deeply, after all. He under- 
stood her so little, was so absorbed in pursuits of his 
own, pursuits that seemed in her eyes meanly 
trivial. 

She did not love him, or, with love’s quick intui- 
tion, she would have understood that beneath his 
outward cheerfulness there were terrible moments. 
To watch her ride away down the avenue, and to 
think that he should never again know the delights 
of a run across country on a soft morning when the 
scent lay thick ; to hear the guns disturbing the crisp 
October stillness, and to stifle his longing for the 
sports in which he had once excelled, — all this was a 
torture that he bore with a silence that had its hero- 
ism. She did her duty. Her absences from home, 
though frequent, were brief, and she was loyal absent 
as well as present. Of the many who had flirted 


12 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


with Philippa Fane, not one could boast the slightest 
favor from the cold, stately Mrs. Farrant. 

On the whole, Arthur was not unhappy. There 
were alleviations. To-day his wheeled couch was 
drawn under a great cedar, and he was propped up 
on his pillows, a cigar in his mouth, and in his hands 
a pack of cards. A thoroughbred fox-terrier lay 
stretched beside him on the grass, waking from time 
to time to demand a readily granted caress from bis 
master. Arthur Farrant was very fond of cards. 
They whiled away some of his dullest hours, and 
when he had no friend at hand he could amuse him- 
self with patience problems. The strongly built 
young man, with his big, idle, white hands, his 
splendid frame, was powerless, as dependent on his 
servant as an infant. 

There was pathos in the picture, perhaps all the 
more that there was no repining, no ill temper, in 
the handsome face. Yet Philippa had noted it dis- 
dainfully. Smoke in this flower-scented air ! Cards 
when the pageant of summer was moving slowly past 
with every rustle of the fresh leaves, with every 
sleepy note of the cooing wood-pigeons! Why did 
Arthur never read, never think, never seem troubled 
by the doubts and perplexities that haunted her? 

She did not see how miserable he would have been 
had he done so, or realize how unbearable he might 


MAN AND WIFE. 


13 


have made her existence. She only wanted from 
him the sort of intellectual sympathy he could not 
give, and which it was infinitely more wholesome 
for her to be denied. 

• He had not noticed that she was passing down a 
path toward the wood that was her favorite walk, 
but she had stood watching him unseen, and had 
noted a little incident that came back to her with 
curious clearness afterward. 

One of the cards slipped down on the ground. 
Ordinarily she would have come forward and picked 
it up, bat to-day she was in one of her moods of im- 
patience with her husband. At times she Vv^as indig- 
nant with his very resignation. “ Hi ! Masher, fetch 
it, good boy,” she heard him say cheerfully. The 
little dog trotted off obediently; but when be jumped 
upon his master’s lap, the queen of hearts was a 
mangled scrap of cardboard. Masher’s sudden 
spring sent the rest of the pack flying. The average 
man would have been put out, but not so Arthur 
Farrant. He began placidly to play with the male- 
factor, and to put him through some of the many 
tricks he had taught him. 

Philippa hurried away into the wood with a sense 
of distaste and weariness she did not even try to 
repress. Her inner life was not shared by any con- 
fidential friend. It was absolutely her own, and 


14 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


latterly she had fostered the dangerous habit of per- 
petual self-questioning and analysis. It is generally 
a bad sign when we love no company so well as our 
own. Philippa Farrant, in her wealth, her stately 
beauty, and her mental solitude, stood on the edge of 
an abyss of danger. She had no special interests, 
no warm affections, to compete with the self with 
which she was forever taking counsel. 

There were those who praised Mrs. Farrant as a 
model wife ; her most determined detractor could not 
accuse her of any failure in her duty to her husband. 
There were occasional moments when conscience told 
another and a variant story. She knew that it was 
the letter, not the spirit of the law that she mechani- 
cally fulfilled. She looked back as to a stranger at 
the Philippa Fane who for a moment had dreamt of 
a life of self-oblation and noble devotion to the man 
who loved her. She was reluctantly conscious that 
the better impulses of her girlhood came but seldom 
now. She gave money when she was asked ; never 
otherwise. She had no sympathy with, no knowl- 
edge of, the actual poor close at hand, although she 
had a rather warm theoretical pity for suffering hu- 
manity. She would not have hurt her horses or the 
splendid tawny collie following her leisurely along 
the pine-scented path; yet there were times when, 
by a careless word, she made her husband wince 


MAN AND WIFE. 


16 


cruelly, and as he never betrayed his pain, she 
scorned him secretly for bluntness of perception. 
His character was beyond her power to read. 

On this June afternoon she said to herself fretfully 
that fate had been unjust. She had not tasted the 
best of life. Of what use were her youth, her 
beauty, her talents? If she could have painted, or 
written, or made music, and become famous, she 
would have been happy, she imagined. She had 
that true feeling for, and comprehension of, art in a 
multitude of forms, combined, as it occasionally is, 
with an odd executive ineptitude. She, who could 
stand before a Raphael and experience such sensa- 
tions of delight as fall to the lot of very few, could 
not make a simple sketch. She had even tried to 
write verses, and failed in a manner that made her 
hot to recall it ; though why all the world should use 
prentice hands for the most difficult of the arts is a 
mystery. She thought she loved literature, yet, un- 
confessedly, found her chief delight with its Amiels 
and Marie Bashkirtseffs. She had not much sense 
of humor, and one of the things that most frequently 
provoked her with Arthur was his appreciation of 
little jokes. To stately Philippa genuine fun was a 
thing well-nigh abhorrent. The subtleties of cynical 
wit rejoiced her ; for honest laughter she cared little. 

She now flung herself down in a naturally easy 


16 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


and graceful attitude, upon the short, thymy grass 
growing in an open glade, and gave herself up to 
unprofitable dreaming. She wanted to be free, free — 
that, she supposed, was really the truth and conclu- 
sion of the whole matter. It is strange to note the 
moral effect of a euphonious sentence. Even alone 
with her heart, Philippa Farrant would not have 
cared to own that she wished her husband dead. 
Yet she could desire to be free, well knowing the one 
way by which that freedom could be decorously 
accomplished. 

Her meditations were one long tissue of discon- 
tent. Everything was flat, stale, and unprofitable. 
The wood-pigeons cooing sleepily, the murmuring 
insects, these found deep delight in the warm sum- 
mer-time. Why could she not re-awaken that joy 
in mere life that had overwhelmed her in the days of 
her early youth? She would not now remember that 
those exquisite moments had been set like water- 
springs in a desert of duU days. Mere freedom 
looked so enticing in retrospect that she forgot the 
rest. As she sat upon the short, velvety turf, with 
a long spray of honeysuckle in her hand, she might 
have been an embodiment of June herself. The 
plain, soft muslin dress showed the curves of her 
round, graceful figure; the great white hat shaded 
cheeks flushed like the rich roses she was wearing. 


MAN AND WIFE. 


17 


Hers was no longer the charm of extreme youth, but 
that more dangerous seduction of ripe maturity. 

All at once a voice, louder 'and shriller than the 
wood-pigeons’, startled the lazy air. A thin, high, 
childish treble sounded clearly from the narrow lane 
that ran below the palings of Allaronde. Children 
passed that way often enough, and sometimes sang 
with a distressing Middlesex accent, but never before 
had the birds been frightened by the words that hush 
the Provengal babies to sleep : 

“ Mes souliers sont rouges, 

Ma mie, ma mignonne. ” 

The refrain was repeated two or three times with 
such increased emphasis that it roused Philippa to 
curiosity. There was a hole in the thick screen of 
trees through which she could peep. 

A young man and a fantastically dressed little girl 
were walking along the white, dusty road. He was 
tall and slight, with a pale face and dark, short, 
pointed beard, and though dressed rather carelessly 
in a shabby light suit, his ease and grace of bearing 
gave him distinction. There was a touch of foreign- 
ness apparent even more in the child, who skipped 
and danced along as if her slim form had no weight 
in it at all. The man looked tired and abstracted. 

At last the singer stopped abruptly. “ Carry me, 


18 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


papa. I’m tired. And please listen to my new 
song.” In another moment the yellow frock was 
whirled upon a strong shoulder, and two little slen- 
der arms were tightly clasped round the father’s 
neck. Then again rose the song, more triumphantly 
than ever : 

“ Mes souliers sont rouges, 

Ma mie, ma mignonne,” 

and the great dog awoke and growled gently as the 
voice and the footsteps died away. 

Philippa was not, as a rule, curious. She had 
seen too much of Society to greet fresh people with 
any kind of pleasurable anticipation. She was so 
thoroughly accustomed to be bored that she scarcely 
cared to trouble herself to perform the social duties 
Arthur liked to have hospitably and punctually ful- 
filled. But there was an unusualness about this pair 
of wayfarers that interested her, and made her re- 
member that yesterday, when her pet aversion, the 
vicar’s wife, had paid one of her frequent calls, she 
had told them that a ruinous but picturesque old 
house called Lettice Close had just been taken by a 
young artist and his family. 

“As a clergyman’s wife, I shall be obliged to call 
at once,” Mrs. Millington had said at parting; “but 
I hear this Mr. Adrian Sarel had a French mother, 
so I shall be very careful. With foreigners, one 


MAN AND WIFE. 


19 


never knows.” Philippa had let her ripple on with 
her rapid, rather staccato voice, without paying her 
much attention, but now she remembered a conversa- 
tion that had then appeared futile enough. She 
could not settle down, either to her thoughts or to 
the books she had brought v^ith her as an excuse for 
idle dreaming. She strolled about restlessly, gath- 
ering a careless posy of tall foxgloves and grasses, 
with some of the opal dog-roses that flowered abun- 
dantly wherever the sun reached them. 

At last she retraced her steps slowly by the same 
path . The chair was still under the cedar tree, but 
there were sounds of cheerful voices, and a young 
man sat beside her husband. She went indoors, and 
stood a moment in the broad, cool hall before ringing 
the bell. 

“Dr. Buchanan is here, ma’am,” the respectful 
butler volunteered as he answered her summons and 
offered her a letter. 

“ Then take tea out at once.” 

She opened her letter with very little interest or 
curiosity. It was written in a formal, clerkly hand, 
and looked like a bill. Yet, after reading the few 
lines it contained, she turned very pale and clung to 
the back of one of the heavy oak chairs for support. 
The contingency that had seemed impossible in her 
impatient girlhood had happened, and Philippa Far- 


20 


THE POWER OF THE DOO. 


rant, by the death of an unknown relative without 
nearer heirs, had come into the possession of some- 
thing like three thousand a year. 

“ Too late !” The words fell from her lips aloud. 
Why had she married Arthur? Why had she not 
waited? Why had she allowed her mad impulse to 
be her guide, prompted as it had been partly — nay, 
now she almost believed wholly — by her weariness 
of poverty? Here, in the splendid house he had 
given her— given her, as she knew, absolutely by his 
will — she rebelled wildly against the tie that bound 
her. Oh, she longed to leave all this quiet luxury, 
this dull, comfortable monotony. She would like to 
go away, to see new worlds, to forget her unattrac- 
tive past. In a few moments a storm of such inten- 
sity had raged in her heart at her own impotence 
that it seemed to leave her years older. 

“Tea is served,” said the butler suddenly, and, 
like a true woman, she went calmly out and greeted 
her guest with a smile, just as if all the Furies were 
not tormenting her soul. 

Dr. Harold Buchanan was young, clever, ener- 
getic, and good-looking. He had come to Northbent 
as assistant to a sleepy old practitioner, and in a few 
months had wrought astonishing changes. His 
daily visit to Arthur Farrant was one of his pleas- 
ures, and was a delight to his patient. He was pop- 


MAN AND WIFE. 


21 


ular everywhere, and even fastidious Philippa ad- 
mitted that he was a good talker. With his acute 
gray eyes he instantly noted that Mr. Farrant was 
not quite herself. He saw that the long white hand, 
with its load of diamonds, trembled a little as she 
poured out the tea. 

But Arthur observed nothing unusual. The color 
had returned to her cheeks, and he fondly admired 
her beauty as she sat there with the background of 
roses and June sky. 

“What a Paradise your place is,” said the young 
doctor, eating strawberries with boyish enjoyment, 
“after a long round of stuffy cottages, smelling of 
cooking.” 

“Don’t,” said Philippa, interrupting him. “It is 
a sin to think of unpleasant things on such a day.” 

“Granted; but, you see, it is only the lucky few 
who have a chance of forgetting them,” said the 
doctor, filling Farrant’s plate with a fresh supply of 
fruit. 

“ Buchanan has been telling me that the new peo- 
ple who have taken Lettice Close are likely to be ac- 
quisitions,” said Arthur, with the unfailing interest 
in the least scrap of local news that was one of the 
things which unconfessedly irritated his wife. She 
thought it undignified of her husband to care to hear 
exactly how Harold Buchanan’s patients were get- 


22 


THE POWER OF THE DOQ. 


ting on. What she stigmatized as gossip was her 
abhorrence. She was not very logical, for she read 
the Society papers with unfailing regularity, regard- 
less of the fact that, after all, the difference between 
London and Northbent news was not very essential. 
She did not realize how much unostentatious charity 
came of those talks with Harold Buchanan, or how 
much the young doctor’s wholesome nature did to 
keep Arthur cheerful. She fell into the absurd error 
of always judging other people from her own stand- 
point, instead of mentally putting herself in their 
position before doing so. 

“JSTew people in Northbent are always charming 
until they are found out to be exactly like their pred- 
ecessors. If they are poor, they are discontented; if 
they are rich, they are dull.” 

Harold Buchanan looked at Philippa searchingly 
for a moment as she said these words. There was a 
pettishness, or an excitement, in her manner that 
was new. He had always fancied her languid in- 
difference to be assumed ; this assured him of it. 

‘‘ I know very little, of course, about Mr. and Mrs. 
Adrian Sarel,” he continued; “but I can vouch for 
it that they are not much like the people who come 
here as a rule.” 

“That is a comfort,” said Philippa carelessly. 

“ Why, I am sure we have some very nice neigh- 


MAN AND WIFE. 


23 


bors/’ said Arthur, who was easy to please if people 
were only good-tempered and sociable. 

“ To begin with, Mr. Sarel is half French and an 
artist, and Mrs. Millington has decided we must all 
be very careful. Foreigners, you know, are not 
always quite nice,” and Buchanan imitated the well- 
known voice of the would-be autocrat of Northbent. 
“ All the same, I thought him a rather remarkable 
man. He was brought up as his heir by an uncle 
who was reputed very wealthy. This de Bresne 
died, and left his nephew the mere pittance that was 
all he had not squandered. He had a strong bent 
for art, and had no alternative but to become a pro- 
fessional artist instead of an amateur, and, having a 
secure income of nothing a year, married the orphan 
daughter of a clergyman. She was seventeen and 
very pretty. That was about ten years ago, and 
they have two children, a queer little girl with eyes 
as black as sloes, and a pretty boy of four, who is 
lame, poor little chap. Oh no, I did not find all this 
out during my one call. I know a man who knew 
Sarel in Paris.” 

“And can he paint?” asked Arthur, with an im- 
mediate vision of giving the struggling artist a 
commission. 

“That is a question I find it difficult to answer. 
First of all, I am no judge. Secondly, the man was 


24 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


so contemptuous of his own work he almost forced 
me to share his opinion. Too much of the homely 
sentimental engraving style of business for me. I 
should have thought him likely to have had more 
daring, to have attempted more.” 

But Philippa had hardly listened to all this. The 
flush had faded from her cheeks, and she sat silent 
and evidently absorbed in her own thoughts. She 
gave her hand to Buchanan carelessly when he rose 
to go a few minutes later, and sat bathed in the rosy 
sunset glow without speaking, until his footsteps 
died away down the hard gravel of the carriage 
drive. Then she said coldly and slowly, “ Arthur, I 
have something to tell you.” 

There was a pause, and the handsome invalid 
smiled as if he would fain have won a look from the 
eyes that were averted. 

“ An Eric Davenant, who, it seems, was a relative 
of mine, has died in Australia. He made a good 
deal of money there. I have had a letter telling me 
about it. I inherit it.” 

There was something in her voice that thrilled her 
husband with a dull dread. When she had married 
him, he had worshipped her for her nobility, her 
womanly tenderness for a poor, helpless log such as 
he must be until he died. He merely laughed at 
those who hinted that beautiful Philippa had mar- 


MAN AND WIFE. 


25 


ried him for his money. He rated himself and his 
thousands too lowly to consider this possible. Had 
he been a millionaire, perhaps it might have been so ; 
but as it was — no. He firmly believed that nothing 
but love could have dictated such a sacrifice. If at 
times doubts had depressed his hopeful spirit, he had 
cheered himself with his blind faith that without 
love she would not have given herself away. He 
recalled the letter she had written — the letter that 
was to be buried with him when he died — all on fire 
with resolve and tenderness. She had been as ice to 
aU other men, he knew, and yet 

“ How much is it, dearest?” he asked quietly. 

“ Three thousand a year.” 

Still the same cold voice and downcast eyes. He 
could not kiss her, could not clasp her in his arms. 
He could not by any tangible means assure him- 
self that this fair woman was the wife who had 
sworn tearfully to cherish him “ in sickness and in 
health.” A lingering nightingale filled the warm 
air with melody; the scent of the syringa and 
honeysuckle came through it like incense. The min- 
utes dragged by like hours. The moment that had 
been imminent ever since their hands were joined 
had come. In a flash of terrible insight the hus- 
band Philippa had hitherto only wronged in thought 
knew all. 


26 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


“You never loved me. My God, that I were in 
my grave !” 

The low, agonized exclamation broke the spell 
between them, but still Philippa made no sign. She 
was not mistress of herself enough to tell the supreme 
falsehood plausibly, and so she went away and left 
him alone to realize all the sorrow of the present, the 
mockery of the past, and the dreariness of the future. 


CHAPTER II. 


PAINTER, NOT ARTIST. 



pCRING the momentous hour that changed Ar- 
thur Farrant’s whole life, although its ap- 
parent effect was brief, the new tenant of 
Lettice Close was loitering about his weedy garden 
with a listless step, but with a sparkle in his dark 
eyes that looked like irritation. The cottage was 
picturesque, but rather ruinous of aspect, and was 
not improved by the rough addition of a badly-shaped 
room on the north side, which had been grudgingly 
added by a landlord who was really glad to get the 
house off his hands on any terms, but had done so 
as cheaply and as hideously as possible. 

No place that has trees and grass can be ugly in 
June, but there was something dispiriting in the 
aspect of the green paths that ought to have been 
gravel, the roses choked with bindweed, and the 
rampant growth of groundsel. There was an ab- 
sence of color displeasing to the artist’s eye, and he 
regretted for the hundredth time the impulse that 

had led him to yield to his wife’s ardent wish to live 
27 


28 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


in England. His uncle, Parisian though he was, 
had sent him to school in his father’s country, but 
for various causes he had been much abroad, and he 
neither looked nor was an Englishman. 

He had met Isabel Dale in Switzerland when he 
was on a sketching tour with some student friends, 
and she, poor child, was breaking her heart as a 
governess. At eighteen she had been irresistible in 
her sweet freshness and simplicity, so, rashly and 
impudently enough, they had married. She was 
twenty-eight now, but looked much older. She was 
cumbered with so many cares and anxieties of a 
pressing and absorbing nature that she had no time 
to think of her own appearance, and had almost for- 
gotten the days when Adrian used to spend hours in 
painting her. 

She was honest, good, and conscientious to the 
heart’s core. She loved her husband and her little 
daughter with a kind of deprecating devotion. Fay 
was her father’s child, with her quick wit, her clever, 
caustic, unchildlike remarks. But it was her boy 
who had the first place — little Randolph, whom his 
father had all unwittingly lamed for life by letting 
him fall when quite a baby. There had been some- 
thing wrong ever since, but the mother forgot the 
defect when she looked at Handle’s blue eyes and 
yellow curls. Adrian Sarel was not a coa^sistent 


PAINTER, NOT ARTIST. 


29 


man. When he had seen how bravely the young 
mother bore the terrible blow he had inflicted, he had 
honored and admired his wife as he had never done 
before. The two-months-old baby was not his rival 
in her heart, as he had almost thought. She had 
forgiven him so freely, so immediately, and so fully. 
But as time went on, he grew more and more proud 
and fond of the daughter who was so wild and so 
original. 

Handle was quiet, dreamy, and wrapped up in 
his mother, almost to the exclusion of other affec- 
tions. He was very timid and silent, and was afraid 
of his father — 'why he could not have explained — and 
that fear kept them asunder. He and Fay were 
indoors now, having their tea, but down by the 
neglected strawberry beds a little figure with a big 
hat and basket was busily gathering up the ground- 
sel, though as yet with very small apparent result. 

Adrian Sarel glanced impatiently at his wife, and 
was almost indignant with the industry he made 
no attempt to share. He was in very low spirits, 
though the letter from a leading picture-dealer that 
he was holding in his hand would have delighted 
many a better painter than he. It was an order for 
a replica of a picture he had sent to the Academy 
and sold, to be paid for at a rate that would have 
sounded wealth to thrifty Isabel. 


30 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


“So ‘ The Little ConvalesceDt’ is a success,” mut- 
tered Sarel, with a smile that was more cynical than 
agreeable. “Always my fate. I paint some senti- 
mental trash, and the British public buys and be- 
lauds, and the few critics who know anything about 
art sneer cheaply at my triviality of subject and 
pettiness of treatment. I slave away for months at 
something worthy to be called a picture, and it is 
rejected all round.” 

“Too big, m}^ dear fellow, for a place where R. 
A.’s have it all their own way as regards space. 
Stick to the babies and puppy-dogs that pay and are 
popular.” His advisers had said this to him till he 
was tired of hearing it. 

“And so I must,” he concluded, thinking with in- 
dolent distaste of the work before him. “A poor 
man with a wife and family had better get his bread 
by breaking stones than by painting pictures, if he 
happens to be burdened with a soul. I hate the 
whole thing, treated in this way. If I had only 
money enough, the name of Adrian Sarel might sign 
something that would live. Artists should not 
marry. ‘ There’s still Lucrezia,’ even with an An- 
drea del Sarto, and so he is never a Raphael or a da 
Vinci. I do not soar as high as he, but if I want to 
get away from the nineteenth-century prose, I am 
dragged back by the chains of circumstance. It is 


PAINTER, NOT ARTIST 


31 


like condemning a novelist to endless paragraph 
scribbling, or a musician to play Offenbach all his 
days, when his heart is with Wagner. If I were 
free, I would never send my one talent to market. 
If I could do anything else to make an income, I 
would consent never to touch a brush again. Then 
I should have a right to dream of what might have 
been, instead of scorning myself as I do now. But 
there, if I begin at once, I shall end all the sooner, 
and Fay can have some new toys when the bill is 
paid.” 

“Isabel, Isabel,” he called, and his wife looked up 
from her weeding and came toward him quickly. 
He was standing under a shady cedar, and it did not 
occur to him to walk out into the hot sunshine and 
so spare her the interruption and the glare. 

Isabel Sarel was no longer the lovely apple-blossom 
maiden whose delicate porcelain coloring and china- 
blue eyes had won her beauty-loving Adrian. She 
was usually somewhat pale now, and the weeding 
had made her head ache. Her dress was neat, but 
ineffective and unpicturesque to the last degree. 
The masses of fair hair she had once spent so much 
time in arranging were plaited away simply and 
tightly. Yet Isabel was a girl still, and would have 
liked pretty dresses and feminine luxury as well as 
any one if they had come in her way. Only it took 


32 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


her all her time to make the children the models of 
care and good taste they always were, and though 
Adrian was forever designing frocks that set off the 
rather peculiar charms of his little daughter, he sel- 
dom spoke of or noticed her gowns nowadays, and 
what did it matter so long as he was satisfied? She 
was so absorbed in her busy round of household cares 
that she forgot herself altogether. 

There are plenty of women who pass these selfless 
lives without a thought that there is any injustice in 
such treatment. Then their husbands encounter 
brilliant, fascinating ladies in sccietj^ and are 
vaguely discontented tliat they are not made after 
this expensive pattern. So they are grumbled at 
and made willing slaves, until perhaps they vanish 
into a world that is much fitter for them, and the 
husbands discover how thanklessly thej’’ have been 
entertaining angels unawares. 

To-night Isabel was very tired. The groundsel 
seemed endless. That terrible period of the quarter 
would come with the 24th of June, and there were 
the inevitable bills and so little money to meet them. 
There were lines on the white forehead under the 
serviceable but unbecoming straw hat, lines that 
should not have been there. They deepened as she 
saw that something had occurred to annoy her hus- 
band. She had fallen into the way of not expect- 


PAINTER, NOT ARTIST. 33 

iiig good news, so the surprise was sweet when it 
came. 

I have just had a letter. ‘The Little Convales- 
cent’ is sold, and some idiot actually wants a replica 
— an American, of course,” said Adrian, with a bit- 
terness his wife did not notice in her gladness. 

The delight that brightened her eyes and brought 
her peculiarly charming smile to show her dimples, 
made her as pretty as ever in a moment. Her 
beauty had not really gone; it would bloom out 
again with a very little relief from that perpetual, 
irksome duty of taking such weary thought for the 
morrow. 

“ Oh, Adrian, I am so proud of you, and so thank- 
ful,” she said gratefully, forgetting his look of vex- 
ation. “Fancy our boy’s dear little face going so 
far. I said it was the best thing you had ever done, 
and this proves I am not such a bad judge, after all, 
as I always think. It is such a comfort to know 
that the money will come ” 

“ As usual, just in time to be swallowed up by the 
bills,” interrupted her husband. “Ah, well, I sup- 
pose I ought to be satisfied to see the British Matron 
standing before my work and calling it sweetly 
pretty, and the successful Chicago pork dealer doling 
me out a few of his superfiuous dollars to give to the 

baker and the milkman.” 

3 


34 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


The sudden relief from a very present fear had 
made Isabel too happy to try, as was her rule, at 
once to fall in with her husband’s mood, or to be 
quite as tactful as usual. 

“Never mind, Adrian; the time will come when 
you will be able to do exactly as you like. It must. 
Nobody paints better than you do, and when you 
have done the replica — and it won’t take very long — 
you can rest a bit, or work at something you care 
about.” 

“To be rejected, like ‘Medea.’ Well, Isabel, I’m 
glad you are so pleased. And, look here, do get 
yourself a gown. That horrible drab thing makes 
me hot to look at it.” 

It gave Isabel a thrill of harmless pleasure to know 
that Adrian cared to look at her at all. The thought 
that when the bills were all paid there would be no 
margin for new dresses, did not destroy her satisfac- 
tion in the least. Indeed, she was already planning 
a green velvet suit with a pale blue sash for Randie, 
if the funds held out to allow of any luxuries. 

“ I am going to take the children for a walk after 
they have had their tea. It has been too warm for 
Randie all day. Will you come too? It would be 
quite like old times,” she said wistfully. 

“No; I must answer the letter before post-time. 
But I will meet you later if you like.” He added 


PAINTER, NOT ARTIST. 


35 


this with a sudden prick of the conscience that now 
and then reminded him that, seldom as Isabel asked 
him to do anything, he almost always found an ex- 
cuse for denying her. 

She emptied her big basket of its load, and went 
into the house. There were sounds of laughter up- 
stairs, and presently she came out again with her 
two children. 

They were a striking pair, certainly. Fay was 
too thin and brown at present, and tall for her seven 
years ; but her dark, wavy hair hung in thick, un- 
dulating masses under her large hat, and a pair of 
deep, dark eyes looked out bright and fearless from 
the fringe of curls about them. Her hands and feet 
were small and well-shaped. In fact, Felice, as she 
was never called, was her French grandmother, name 
and type, as little Randolph was his mother over 
again. The child, in his loose suit of dark blue 
cotton, used his crutch with a pathetic dexterity 
that would have struck an outsider painfully. But 
Isabel was too accustomed to it to torment herself by 
perpetual contrasts between Fay’s elfish lightness of 
step and her poor little brother’s slow progress. 

Those who looked at Randie’s face forgot his 
lameness directly. There was a sweet, trustful ap- 
peal in it that went straight to the heart. The 
French bonne the Sarels kept because she was so 


36 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


much cheaper than a regular nurse worshipped Mon- 
sieur Bebe; the village children shyly offered him 
flowers ; and since he had sat beside his mother in 
church, a good many people found themselves think- 
ing of the angels in such old masters as happened to 
appeal to their special taste. “Dear lamb,” an old 
woman had said to his mother, “it does me good 
even to look at him.” For the perfect, exquisite 
innocence, the rare charm of freshness, that most 
children lose so early, made themselves felt by 
all who came in contact with the one son of Adrian 
Sarel. 

Isabel was as glad as the children were to-night, 
and listened to Fay’s rapid chatter with even more 
than usual contentment. 

“ Where shall we go?” she inquired, as they neared 
the garden gate. 

“We both want to go to the canal,” said Fay, who 
always took the lead. “ The forget-me-nots must be 
out, and I want to pick them.” 

“I’ll pick a big bunch, all for you, mummy,” said 
Randie with much satisfaction. 

“And we can sit on the grass and make chains 
with the dog-daisies,” put in Fay. 

A canal is not like a river, inasmuch as it is arti- 
flcial instead of natural, but it has the great advan- 
tage in a riverless district of being accepted by the 


PAINTER, NOT ARTIST. 


37 


water-mint and willow herb and forget-me-not as an 
efficient substitute for the genuine article. They 
grew in tempting profusion ali aioitg the grassy canal 
banks, which were decidedly popular playgrounds 
with the Northbent babies and tiieir nurses. 

But this evening the place was deserted, and the 
liude party sat down in a bed of clover and golden 
trefoil that made an undergrowth for the tall grasses, 
rosy sorrel, and daisies that covered the sloping bank 
above the water. Isabel rested there wuth a soft ex- 
pression of entire content in her eyes. With those 
dreadful bills off her mind, she could enjoy the still, 
w^arm air, the flowers, and Randie’s joy in the daisy 
chains she was deftly weaving. 

“Chain me tight to j^ou, mummy, so that I can 
never get away, even when I am quite, quite big,” 
said the child. “ I never moan to go awa3^ 
would like to go ever so far across the sea to Q um- 
per, where Suzanne lives, but I only want to be with 
you.” 

What wonder that Isabel should kiss her boy with 
a very passion of tenderness as she threAv the long 
chain round his neck? He was so loving, so win- 
ning; not with uncertain outbursts of demonstrative 
affection such as Fay showed between her frequent 
fits of anger, but with an even, perpetual devotion to 
the one idol of his little heart. 


38 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


After that short interview with her husband, Phil- 
ippa Farrant had felt that she must at once get away 
from Allaronde, if only for an hour. Something 
must happen after such a scene, but at present she 
could not reflect calmly, or, indeed, reflect at all, in 
the place she hated to call home. So she, with her 
dog Kismet, had gone down the mossy path, unlock- 
ing a gate that led to the road, and across a wide 
meadow to the canal. It was past six and quite cool, 
but her head throbbed and ached feverishly. She felt 
as if she had committed a crime, and yet she could 
not regret it. The remembrance of the pain and 
pallor in her husband’s face did not move her from 
her flxed determination to get out of the groove she 
was in at all costs. 

Yet, if she left Arthur Farrant now, what a Anger 
of scorn the world would be justifled in pointing at 
her! For a penniless woman to marry a rich man, 
and abandon him because she had inherited a for- 
tune! These were the bald facts. She could not 
make society understand all the subtleties of the 
case. Like every woman who has been in a similar 
or analogous position, she thought her own instance 
was as unique in all respects as in one it possibly 
was. Then, she would have to give reasons if she 
acted deflnitely. What could she say? What 
smallest stone could she cast at the husband who had 


PAINTER, NOT ARTIST, 


39 


flung his money at her feet as if it were unworthy of 
her acceptance? Had she but had the resolution to 
tell Arthur the truth two or three years ago, what a 
different position she would have been in. 

But now it would reveal so glaringly the true 
reason of her marriage, which was not quite the 
truth, after all. There had been that momentary, 
pure impulse of unselfishness, transient as it had 
been. She knew it, but was it likely the world would 
give her even the scanty meed of approval awarded 
at the time by her own conscience? She had no 
tangible excuse, no lover to tempt her until her yield- 
ing might seem almost forgivable. She had never 
loved, though she had enjoyed using the power of 
her own beauty to the utmost. It was a tangled 
skein to unravel. A decision was inevitable before 
she and Arthur met again. 

She strolled along the top of the bank, and pres- 
ently caught sight of Isabel Sarel and Handle, both 
hung with a tangle of daisy chains. She stood 
watching them idly, and, almost for the first time, 
wished she too had had children. She was by no 
means naturally fond of them, but she noticed, like 
every one else, the beautiful, serene face and the gold- 
en halo of curls. Sitting as he was in the long grass, 
the little crutch was not visible, and his merry laugh 
rang clear and musical in the lazy summer breeze. 


40 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Fay, whb was a restless mortal, had soon tired of 
daisy chains, and had amused herself by blowing 
away vigorously at the dandelion clocks. She sud- 
denly remembered the forget-me-nots, and walked 
along lower down to see if she could find any. They 
did not seem to be very plentiful as yet, but the child 
managed to reach a few sprays, wetting her thin 
shoes as she did so. 

Her mother forgot her for the time, so she wan- 
dered on till she saw the bright blue fiowers in tempt- 
ing profusion, apparently on dry land. “It looks 
just a bit squashy and soft,” she said to herself, 
“but I expect it will bear me. Papa calls me 
Featherweight.” Just for one instant the little, light 
figure stood safely upon the pale green leaves and 
grasses; the next, there was a piercing shriek, and 
Fay was struggling in the midst of the canal. 

Philippa Farrant and Isabel Sarel were side by 
side by this time. Both heard the agonized scream. 
Philippa was an accomplished swimmer. Isabel 
could not swim at all. Pale as death she started up 
and broke the encumbering daisy chains. 

“Mummy, mummy, don’t leave me,” cried Ran- 
die, clinging to her. 

For one brief second Isabel hesitated, for she was 
not a courageous woman. If the man who hesitates 
is lost, how much more a woman, from whom so 


PAINTER, NOT ARTIST. 


41 


much more is always expected? In that dash the 
golden opportunity vanished, for Philippa had flung 
herself into the water, and, with the few easy strokes 
of a practised swimmer, had seized Fay and was 
bringing her safely back to land. 

It was the most horrible experience of Isabel’s 
whole life. She had let her cowardice make her fail 
in a supreme duty. She had let a stranger take 
from her the sweet task of rescuing her child. Bet- 
ter even to have drowned herself than to have so 
poor a spirit, so pitiful a lack of noble self-oblation. 
Poor Isabel! A wave of bitterness flooded all her 
soul. She knew now with relentless certainly that 
she was not brave, and it was an unutterable humili- 
ation. 

She clasped Fay wildly in her arms when they 
reached the bank, and could not speak to the tall lady 
who was shaking her wet dress and smiling at her 
fear. 

Adrian had kept his promise to meet his wife. He 
came toward them a moment later, and, guessing 
what had happened, bowed low before the woman 
who had saved his little daughter. 

‘‘Papa, papa, I’m not hurt,” said Fay, who was 
terribly frightened and very pale. “I only wanted 
to pick forget-me-nots, and then, all in a minute, I 
was in the water, and then ” 


42 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


‘‘I was luckily close at hand, and brought you 
out,” said Philippa, who had enjoyed the momentary 
excitement, and liked to see that this handsome man 
thought her a heroine. 

‘‘I cannot thank you for such a service. Mere 
words are useless. My little daughter” — he had 
taken her from her mother and held her closely — “ is 
the apple of my eye.” 

“ There is a fly going along the road,” said Isabel, 
practical even in the midst of her shame. “ It could 
drive you home, so that you would not take cold.” 

I am Mrs. Farrant, of AUaronde ; so, you see, I 
have only just to go across the meadow to be in my 
own garden. Wet never hurts me. I am as strong 
as possible.” Adrain had signalled the dusty fly, 
and it stopped. “Well, if I do drive, your little girl 
must come also. It is almost on your way, if, as I 
think, you live at Lettice Close.” 

“ Then you must allow me to see you there safely,” 
said Adrian. 

Philippa assented, but Isabel held out her hand. 
“I will walk home across the fields, and see that 
everything is ready for Fay. Come, Randie. I can 
never forget what you have done for us so bravely, 
Mrs. Farrant.” 

Philippa was in one of her most charming moods 
as she drove away with her new acquaintance. 


PAINTER, NOT ARTIST. 


43 


After all, she said to herself, she could not be such a 
very bad woman if she was ready to jump into a 
canal to rescue a strange child. Adrian expressed 
his gratitude much more eloquently than an English- 
man would have done, and magnified the not very 
dangerous incident until it assumed heroic propor- 
tions. She was happier and better satisfied with 
herself than she had been for a long time, for a 
kindly action leaves a warm glow, whatever motive 
has prompted it. 

“Good-by. I shall have the pleasure, I hope, of 
calling on Mrs. Sarel to-morrow,” and, kissing Fay 
lightly, she went into the hall. 

While she was dressing, her maid brought a mes- 
sage to say that her husband had a bad headache and 
would not dine. It was a relief, for it adjourned the 
need of an immediate decision. 

She thought over her escapade and the actors in 
the unexpected little drama in which she had played 
the leading part. She had noticed Isabel’s hesita- 
tion, momentary though it was, and rather rejoiced 
in it. Mrs. Sarel must be a poor creature if she was 
afraid of a cold bath in the canal. Why, that queer, 
big-eyed girl might have drowned if she had not hap- 
pened to be there. She decided promptly that this 
Mrs. Sarel was a very commonplace, dull woman, 
besides lacking those warm feelings a mother should 


44 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


have toward her own child. Poor Isabel ! She was 
invariably misjudged, and never more so than in 
this instance. 

At Lettice Close there was an excitement in put- 
ting Fay to bed, but Adrian was rather silent at the 
late supper, and Isabel was quietly asking herself 
whether she ought to tell her husband of her fear 
and its result, though she dreaded intensely that he 
might condemn her as she condemned herself. 

He went to the studio after he had been upstairs 
to kiss the little daughter who was now asleep, and 
who was the only thing on earth he cared for even 
half as much as for himself. There was a great can- 
vas turned against the wall. He had not looked at 
it since the day when it had come back rejected 
from the Academy. The bare, unluxurious room, 
with no furniture except the merest necessaries, was 
flooded with moonlight, and the scent of the monthly 
roses came in through the open widow. 

Adrian took up the picture that had inspired so 
much hope and ended with such sickening dis- 
appointment. He put it upon the easel, and looked 
at it long and critically. It represented Medea com- 
pounding the love-potion that was to win her the 
heart of Jason. The tall, dark woman, in a yellow 
robe, with jewels on her bare round arms and in her 
dusky hair, was standing in a deep wood of cypress 


PAINTER, NOT ARTIST. 


45 


and ilex. The moon shone out, paled and half ob- 
scured by the blue smoke that rose thickly from the 
smouldering fire of logs over which hung the brazier 
that contained the mystic ingredients. It was not 
vengeance-demanding Medea, ready to steep her 
hands in blood to gain her heart’s desire; it was not 
the enchantress, strong in the knowledge of her art, 
and calling on the invisible spirits to aid her, that 
Adrian had tried to depict. It was simply a mere 
woman with a soul convulsed by her first great pas- 
sion. She had forgotten even her spells for a mo- 
ment, and was praying to the gods, with her black 
eyes upraised, as fervently as the simplest girl. 

“Women are all alike when they are in love,*’ 
Adrian had once said, and he had tried to show the 
proud Princess of Colchis under a new aspect. He 
had certainly failed to impress the Hanging Com- 
mittee, but until this moment his faith in bis own 
effort had been unshaken. Now, as he looked at 
“Medea,” he made two discoveries simultaneously. 
One was that she bore a strong likeness to Mrs. Far- 
rant ; the other, that, after all, he had not done much 
more than paint a pretty woman in a graceful atti- 
tude. 

Two months ago the last conclusion would have 
filled him with despair. Now it was the first that 
principally affected him. He looked at the features 


46 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


with increasing surprise. The face had not been 
that of a model. It had smiled at the painter in his 
own imagination, and had been completed weeks 
before he had come to Lettice Close. 

“ Yet, if that picture had been in the Academy, it 
might have been thought Mrs. Farrant had honored 
an obscure artist by letting him take advantage of ‘a 
perfect woman, nobly planned.’ I should like to 
paint her ; not in a modern gown, all furbelows and 
frills, though.” 

He wandered about until he took up an old sketch 
book. Page after page revealed one face, his wife’s, 
in every pose and every expression. 

How she had changed ! Or is it merely that one 
tires even of a beauty one knows too well? 

He shut the book abruptly, and went through the 
low passage to the little drawing-room. Isabel was 
sitting beside a shaded lamp, busily mending one of 
Fay’s gay little frocks. She had no time for think- 
ing with idle hands, but she had had her mental 
struggle, and won a victory that left her pale but 
resolute. 

“Do you think I am a coward, Adrian?” she 
asked, looking up sadly at her tall husband. 

“ Of course not. Why, you silly child, what put 
such an idea into your head?” 

“I must tell you,” she burst out with an earnest- 


PAINTER, NOT ARTIST. 


47 


ness that startled him. “When Fay fell into the 
canal, just for a moment — only a moment — I felt I 
could not jump into the cold, deep water. Randie 
held me, and I thought I might be drowned and 
never see him again. I should not be afraid to die 
if it were not for leaving him. He would be so des- 
olate without me.” 

Adrian laughed at her with an affectation of care- 
lessness and incredulity, but he was strangely per- 
plexed by the confession so humbly made. He forgot 
that the poor in spirit have their own special bless- 
ing, and that only the most consistently obeyed con- 
science could have prompted her to speak. He 
merely contrasted her weakness with the courage 
and readiness of the brilliant stranger who had 
flashed into his life and saved his child. 


CHAPTER III. 


THE VICARAGE. 



HE day that followed the eventful afternoon 
when Fay Sarel had been rescued from the 
canal had been anticipated for six weeks 
with much anxiety by all the girls in Northbent, and 
by one in particular. The rich new owners of a fine 
old house in the neighborhood, who had made their 
money in the City in some undefined way, were to 
give a ball on a scale of magnificence unparalleled in 
Northbent annals. Rumor was full of the supper, 
the ball-room, built splendidly for the occasion, and 
the special train that was to bring the guests from 
London. The “ Blue Hungarians” were to form the 
orchestra, and a military band was to play in the 
intervals in the illuminated rose gardens. 

The brilliant sunshine augured well for a fine 
evening, and Beryl Millington rejoiced exceedingly 
as she looked out of the window very early to see 
what the weather was likely to be. 

The Reverend Jessop Millington was the Vicar of 

Northbent. His young wife had been early worn 
48 


THE VICARAGE, 


49 


out by the struggle to bring up seven children on a 
curate’s income, and, after about twelve years’ 
heavy labor, had gone anxiously and sorrowfully to 
her grave. Almost with her last breath she had 
advised her grief -stricken husband to marry again ; 
realizing, as he could not realize for himself, how 
utterly helpless he would be without her, though she 
shrank from the thought of a step-mother for her 
three curly-headed sons and four daughters, the eld- 
est of whom was scarcely eleven. 

Jessop Millington was a gentleman and a scholar, 
and he had loved his dead wife tenderly. But her 
unselfish thoughtfulness had fostered his natural in- 
competency to take any share in household drudgery, 
to such a degree that the first year or two following 
her death had been a purgatory he still shuddered to 
recall. Then his college had given him the not par- 
ticularly valuable living of Northbent, and very soon 
afterward he had married again. 

Been married” expressed the truth better, for 
Miss Julia Backson had felt that her income per- 
mitted her to lay so determined a siege to the good- 
looking, absent-minded vicar, as to leave him little 
option in the matter. He met her at a time when he 
was utterly weary of the miserable position of a 
widower with a large family of young children, no 
sisters or near relations to share his responsibility, 
4 


50 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


and none of that natural aptitude for domestic duties 
which is as much the prerogative of certain men as 
of some, but by no means all, women. 

She had domineered over her father till she was 
forty years of age, twenty of which years had been 
spent in tireless effort to change her name. When 
old Mr. Backson had left the tea trade for ever, she 
had tried harder still, and succeeeded. She was not 
in the least like gentle Alice Coventry, but she kept 
house in a systematic fashion, and, as she was for- 
ever repeating, tried to do her duty to the seven chil- 
dren who called her “ mamma” because that other 
name was sacred to an angelic being, all love and 
loveliness, of whom their sister Beryl used to tell 
them stories after they were in bed, or on Sunday 
afternoons. 

Mrs. Millington was a tall, thin, active woman. 
She was so indefatigable and so restless that it would 
have been a joy to her acquaintances to have seen 
her idle for a moment; added to which, she was 
never sleepy and never had a headache. She had 
quick, shallow eyes that were always on the watch 
for the small failings of other people, a sallow com- 
plexion, and dark hair that suggested bandoline by 
its unnatural neatness. 

She was not bad-tempered, and she had many good 
qualities; yet she was the terror of the villagers and 


THE VICARAGE. 


51 


the aversion of the Northbent ladies. It is a pity 
that people who are really good at heart so often pos- 
sess the knack of making themselves detested. Her 
coal and clothing, clubs, her mothers’ meetings, her 
needlework society, were models of their kind. She 
visited her parishioners with clockwork regularity. 
But she could do nothing without fussy proclama- 
tion, and was so profoundly impressed with her own 
ability, judgment, and good taste as to be in a 
chronic state of self-satisfaction which was irritating 
to persons less convinced of their own superiority. 

There was, however, one characteristic worse even 
than this. Mrs. Millington was born a braggart, as 
other people are born poets or musicians. Every- 
thing she possessed — her house, her servants, her 
furniture, and, above all, her garden — was unique of 
its kind. Did a caller remark that she was engaged 
in that quest of forlorn hope, the search for a good 
cook, she had straightway to hear the whole cata- 
logue of the perfections of the vicarage Sarah, whilst 
discussing cake that was a local proverb for tough- 
ness and heaviness. As to her roses, Allaronde and 
six gardeners could scarcely match them. The very 
laurels were so fine that intelligent passers-by had 
been overheard by her to like them to magnolias. 

“If the sea-serpent turns up again, I shouldn’t 
wonder if mamma caught a fine specimen in the pad- 


52 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


dock pond,” Roy Millington had once remarked to his 
pet sister. 

Harold Buchanan took a wicked pleasure in cap- 
ping Mrs. Millington’s endless anecdotes, but even 
that burning and very apparent desire to secure him 
as a husband for Beryl, which afforded him much 
private amusement, and was as yet not even sur- 
mised by Beryl herself, did not make her yield an 
iota of her own supremacy. 

Luckily, the Reverend Jessop was too much im- 
mersed in his studies to be very observant of his 
wife’s defects. It was Beryl who was keenly and 
painfully conscious of them. Beryl who was quick- 
witted enough to rebel against the knowledge that 
her father’s wife was the laughing-stock of North- 
bent. She was eighteen, pretty with a round, youth- 
ful prettiness, and with a short, neat figure. She 
had only one beauty, a pair of small, dainty feet 
with high insteps, but it was these feet at which she 
was looking with much dissatisfaction as she was 
sitting on the low wall that separated the glebe 
meadow from the dusty road that led to the station. 
She was in a shabby, washed-out cotton dress, but, 
for all that, she was grown up now, for was she not 
to come out at Mrs. Hey wood Bunting’s ball this 
very night? 

She could dance really well, and several of the 


THE VICARAGE. 


53 


young fellows she knew had made her very happy 
by asking her to keep them waltzes. “Just as if I 
shouldn’t be only too thankful to get a partner at all 
among all those smart people,” Beryl had thought 
gratefully, for, with all her shrewd power of gaug- 
ing her stepmother, she was very natural and simple, 
and rated herself lowly enough. 

This morning her mind was much perturbed. Her 
dress was all right. An uncle in India had sent her 
a piece of embroidered white silk, and she had as- 
serted herself so strongly about the making that 
Mrs. Milllington had finally given in to her wish 
to have it perfectly plain. She had also spent 
a great slice of her slender allowance on open- 
worked white silk stockings; but the shoes — there 
was the rub. 

Beryl did not often go to London, for even third- 
class fares and omnibuses were apt to mount up, and 
as Mrs. Millington had yesterday made her quarterly 
excursion to purchase the family groceries at the 
stores, to the indignation of the local tradesmen, she 
had been deputed to buy Beryl’s first pair of satin 
shoes. Beryl was not vain, but she had a harmless 
satisfaction in the fact that she wore small threes. 
She had naturally a sense of the fitness of things, 
and her feelings of indignation were intense when 
Mrs. Millington, after her late return home, had 


54 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


opened a parcel and revealed a gaudy mixture of 
scarlet morocco and patent leather. 

Mrs. Millington was utterly devoid of taste in 
dress. She was rather fond of color, and occasion- 
ally indulged in startling contrasts. Her gowns 
were always too youthful, and she affected short, 
tight jackets. Her bonnets made Adrian Sarel abso- 
lutely wince. 

“My dear Beryl,” she began rapidly, “I have 
added another shilling — no, ninepence — to your 
money because I knew how useful these pretty shoes 
would be to you. White satin would be dirty in one 
evening, and if you put some scarlet geraniums in 
your hair to match, it will brighten up your dress, 
which, I must say, strikes me as rather plain for 
such a grand occasion.” 

Beryl was not at all strong-minded, and it is much 
to be feared that her eyes were full of tears. She 
was discussing the knotty point with her second sis- 
ter, Elizabeth — always curtailed to Betty — who was 
almost more provoked than the prospective wearer of 
the articles in question. 

Betty was only fourteen, so her time for ball-going 
was distant. However, she was quite enough of a 
daughter of Eve to pity her sister profoundly as she 
sat beside her, swinging to and fro with more free- 
dom than grace. 


THE VICARAGE. 


55 


“ I do think mamma is quite the most irritating 
person I know,” Beryl exclaimed pettishly. “I did 
think, when I had got the dress decently made, it 
would be all right, and I should pass muster. No- 
body expects a clergyman’s daughter to be anything 
but dowdy. I could have borne that, but ” 

“ You see. Berry, the worst of it is, I don’t believe 
you are very good-looking. I am not quite sure, you 
know, till I see you all dressed up, but I think not. 
Now your feet are pretty,” interrupted Betty, a can- 
did young person who usually spoke first and thought 
some time afterward, if at all. 

“They won’t be, in those horrid, vulgar shoes. 
Mamma’s one idea is what she calls nice, bright 
colors. Did you hear her ask me to put geraniums 
in my hair, red geraniums? She would like to plant 
me all over like that hideous middle bed on the lawn.” 

“ Oh, Berry, why did father marry a woman who 
could put scarlet and magenta into one border?” 

“Why, because he was father, and too good- 
natured not to let her have her own way,” retorted 
Berry with unusual bitterness. 

“If I were you,” began her sister, with the air of 
one proposing a desperate remedy, “ I should go 
straight to father now, ask him to give you some 
money, and go up to London by the 12:10.” 

“Indeed I won’t,” answered Beryl. “He would 


56 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


only look very worried at being disturbed, and say, 
‘Of course, my dear. Go to mamma, and she will 
give you what you want. ’ Then mamma would go 
into the study, and while she was pulling about his 
papers and tidying up the room — and it drives father 
wild to have his things tidied — she would tell him 
how ridiculous it would be to give me ten shillings 
when I had such a good allowance, and how she had 
given a whole extra ninepence to get me shoes that 
would be useful as well as far prettier. No; it is a 
trial for any girl to go to such a ball in such shoes, 
but it would be a thousand times worse to have poor 
dear papa made miserable in this hot weather.” 

“ I tell you what it is. Berry. You will never get 
what you want, because you are always so fidgety 
about making other people uncomfortable. I believe 
you would rather go barefoot than see father’s both- 
ered look; you know the look I mean.” 

Betty always spoke with a clearness of enuncia- 
tion that made her high-pitched, emphatic voice 
carry a long distance. Neither she nor Beryl had 
observed that Dr. Harold Buchanan was walking to 
the station, and that therefore he had necessarily 
overheard a good part of the discussion. He liked 
the vicarage girls, though he stood in such fear of 
Mrs. MiUington that his visits were few and far 
between. 


THE VICARAGE. 


57 


He was not in love with rosy Beryl. Marriage, 
he said to himself, was out of the question for him 
at present, and as he was perfectly heart-whole he 
absurdly imagined that his resignation was due as 
much to philosophy as to force of circumstance. His 
work interested him more than anything else; but 
though his mind was full of the scientific meeting he 
had obtained a holiday to attend, he had listened to 
part of the foregoing dialogue, and smiled to himself. 

Harold Buchanan was poor, and could not often 
allow himself the pleasant luxury of making pres- 
ents ; but, for all that, he was standing in a fashion- 
able shoe-shop in Regent Street an hour later. 

‘‘Poor little thing, it was really rather heroic of 
her to spoil her get-up instead of disturbing her 
father,” he said to himself in excuse for such reckless 
expenditure. “ I don’t fancy many girls would have 
done as much. Now I come to think of it, her feet 
are really very pretty, and pretty feet are so scarce 
that they ought to be made the most of.” 

Dr. Buchanan was not the sort of young man who 
was accustomed to buying gifts for ladies, and he 
felt and looked both shy and awkward when the 
smart shopman came forward. 

“I want some white satin shoes,” he began ner- 
vously, rather bewildered by the variety that were 
instantly set before him. 


58 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


“ What size, sir?” was the natural but embarrass- 
ing question. 

There was a momentary silence, during which the 
doctor devoutly wished he had never embarked on 
this doubtful enterprise. Then he suddenly caught 
sight of some shoes on the counter, and felt persuaded 
that, though smaD, they might do. They were par- 
ticularly dainty too, being of white satin, embroid- 
ered with tiny flowers in silver thread, with silver 
heels. 

“That size,” he answered with an assurance he 
was far from feeling. “ How much are they?” 

“Well, sir, they were made to match a wedding 
dress, and were returned as a misfit, so I would 
charge you twenty-five shillings.” He said this 
with the air of a man making a great sacrifice. 

It was much more than Buchanan had anticipated ; 
but three ladies had just entered the shop, and he 
felt that his one desire in life was to get away. Give 
the address he must, because if he directed the parcel 
himself his writing would be known. So he paid 
the bill and an extra sum for having the parcel sent 
down by the next passenger train to Northbent and 
delivered immediately. 

When it came, the Millington family was having 
tea in the garden rather riotously. It was baby Bar- 
bara’s eighth birthday, and the feast was held in her 


THE VICARAGE. 


59 


honor. The dull drone of a harmonium came 
through the dining-room windows. Mrs. Millington 
was holding her mothers’ meeting, and for once was 
a little late. 

They were all there — the two tall boys from West- 
minster, Roy and Bevan, who were home for an 
exeat; Betty, extremely untidy and hot after an 
afternoon in the hay field, with the twins, Alice and 
Monty, always together and always in mischief; 
curly-headed Barbara, as was her right, wearing a 
crown of wild roses as queen of the day. 

“Fancy you a grown-up young lady. Berry,” said 
Roy, who was to go to the ball himself, and was pri- 
vately a little scared at the prospect. 

“ I don’t believe it will be any jollier at the ball 
than it is here,” said Betty with decision. “You 
will all be so grand in your smart gowns, and no one 
can enjoy life unless one has on old clothes.” 

“It doesn’t make any difference to you, Betty. 
You always ruin a new rig-out in about an hour. 
Who climbed the paddock fence, just after it had 
been re-tarred, in her confirmation gown?” 

“ Well, it was the Sunday after, you know, Bevan, 
and I think it very ungrateful of you not to remem- 
ber that I did it to get a Large Tortoise-shell for your 
collection ; yes, I even killed it for you, though you 
know I hate the killing.” 


60 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


“Never mind, Bet, you are a brick, and Brown 
Minor said he wished he had you for a sister when it 
came by post. He said he should like to know a girl 
capable of feeding his caterpillars when he was 
away. His sisters must be regular duffers. They 
gave his Swallowtails cabbage instead of fennel, and 
they died, after they’d cost him threepence each. 
But what have you got there, Keziah? Something 
good to eat, let us hope.” 

“ A parcel for Miss Beryl.” 

Betty cast one keen- glance at the package her sis- 
ter was curiously opening, and fairly shouted when 
its contents were revealed. “It’s shoes for the ball. 
Oh, Berry, where did they come from? Who sent 
them? Are they for you?” 

Beryl had turned very pink as she held up the 
glittering treasures. “They must be for me,” she 
said, almost too overwhelmed for words. “ But there 
is nothing — not a word — to say who they are from, 
not even the name of the shop,” which the wary 
sender had stipulated was not to be printed on the 
box. 

“ Is it a fairy godmother?” asked Bab, who still 
half believed in the fairies and wholly in Santa 
Claus. 

“They’re beauties, anyhow,” said Betty. “But, 
dear me, what bits of things.” 


THE VICARAGE. 


61 


‘‘Not much like your canal-boats,” said Roy with 
brotherly candor. 

“Oh, very well, Roy,” said Betty imperturbably, 
“I shall say they are too big to run your errands 
next time.” 

Beryl’s heart sank, but she privately resolved that 
wear them she must. They were so lovely, and she 
had never had anything like them before, or, indeed, 
any finery at all. 

“Try them on. Berry,” some one suggested, and 
with much fear and trembling she did so. 

They fitted exquisitely, and, unconsciously enough, 
the girl made a pretty picture, standing beneath the 
big chestnut, lifting up her scanty skirts as if she 
were going to emulate more fashionable folk in a 
pas seul. 

“They’re simply sweet,” said Betty, who loved 
pretty things, though she did not covet them for 
herself. 

Beryl felt as if her cup of happiness had brimmed 
quite over. “ If I only, only could find out who sent 
them, just to say how utterly delighted I am,” she 
exclaimed ecstatically, for, after all, at eighteen very 
small things give immense pleasure. 

“You never will,’^ announced Betty with decision. 
“You are a very poor hand at that sort of thing. 
But I shall.” 


62 THE POWER OF THE DOG. 

Just at this juncture the drawing-room window 
opened, and Mrs. Millington bustled out, provoked to 
find that for once she was late. 

Alice and Monty, go upstairs and brush your hair 
at once. Betty, that elbow must be darned, and 
darned properly, before to-morrow. Beryl, what are 
you doing, and what have you got on your feet?” 
All this without a pause, in her quickest staccato. 

‘‘White satin shoes,” said Beryl, taking them off 
precipitately. 

“Am I blind. Beryl?” said Mrs. Millington, put- 
ting Barbara’s pinafore to rights. “ I go up to Lon- 
don in all this hot weather to buy you expensive 
shoes, and this is what comes of it. You go into 
debt and disobey me. If I were your father, I 
should be inclined to forbid your going to the ball 
at all.” 

“Ah, but you’re all wrong for once,” said Betty 
dauntlessly. “ Berry doesn’t do such things. They 
are a present; nobody knows who from. Why, 
here’s the paper they came in.” 

Mrs. Millington looked scrutinizingly at it, but, 
naturally enough, was not much enlightened. She 
liked to have her own way in trifles, and detested 
any sort of mystery unless she made it herself. 

“Now, Beryl,” she continued, “tell me at once 
who had the impertinence to send you the things. 


THE VICARAOE. 


63 


I call it a deliberate insult to your father and to me. 
Just as if I, at least, had not an income amply suffi- 
cient to send you out properly dressed.” 

“I don’t think it can have been meant like that; 
but, truthfully, mamma, I have no idea where they 
came from.” 

“ I fink a fairy bringed them,” said Bab, who was 
a backward talker. 

“ I am glad to have a sister with decent feet,” said 
Roy, who was Beryl’s own particular brother and 
supporter. “ 1 should like to know how many North- 
bent girls could get on those.” 

Happily, at this moment a caller was announced, 
and Beryl was left in peace. Probably, if Harold 
Buchanan could have known how joyful were her 
thoughts, his growing curiosity to see his purchase 
again would have increased. 

By nine o’clock the long business of dressing was 
over, and the girl was trying to see as much of this 
unfamiliar new self as the small looking-glass in the 
barely furnished room she shared with Betty would 
permit. She was no beauty, but essentially good to 
look at; a freshly colored picture of youth and health, 
and half -glad, half -shy anticipation. 

Betty was ecstatic. My dear Berry, you do look 
a darling, and the shoes are simply sweet. I think I 
was wrong, and that you are pretty, after all.” 


64 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Beryl rather valued honest Betty’s encouragement, 
that young person being famous for the candor of her 
criticisms. She was untidier than ever by this time, 
and the hole in her elbow was bigger than it had 
been at tea. 

Never mind the old thing till you’re all off, any- 
how.” 

“ Oh, Betty, isn’t it a pity you are not old enough 
to come too?” exclaimed Beryl, who felt as if her 
sister would have been a support among all the un- 
familiar faces. 

Betty laughed. “ I’d ever so much rather go out 
sugaring with Bevan. We mean to go to the plan- 
tation and have a regular good time. I’m in no 
hurry to come out. I don’t like company manners. 
It is such a comfort to know mamma will be out of 
the way.” 

“Don’t be too late, Betty,” said Beryl mildly, tak- 
ing up the posy of white roses and carnations that 
was none the less pretty because she had made it 
herself, and going slowly down-stairs. 

They were all in the hall, but Bevan was the 
spokesman. “You look jolly decent,” he said with 
patronizing approval. 

“ She’s like a queen,” said little Alice, looking up 
adoringly at the gentle sister who seemed always to 
be smiling. 


THE VICARAGE. 


65 


Roy, who was a tall, handsome lad not quite at 
ease in his new dress suit, dropped his voice rever- 
ently, and said, as he wrestled with his gloves, “ She 
is like something better. She is like mother,” and 
tben followed the momentary awed pause with 
which that word was always received in the home 
where her faithful eldest born kept the memory of 
the dead so green. 

Mrs. Millington had not come down yet. She had 
too many bows and furbelows to affix to a renovated 
gown to make her toilet a light matter. 

“ Do you think I ought to go to father when he is 
writing his sermon?” questioned Beryl. 

“ My dear Berry, you are a funny girl,” said Betty, 
tossing back her rough hair. “Just as if any old 
sermon mattered when you are going to your very 
first ball, and it’s only Friday.” 

So Beryl went softly into the small, book-lined 
room whence learned commentaries and sometimes 
classically turned hymns went out into the world. 

Mr. Millington had forgotten even the existence of 
the ball. He had had a long, wearisome day with 
the school inspectors, and an even more wearisome 
conversation with his wife. He had meant to begin 
his sermon, but instead had fallen asleep in the dusk, 
the servants, in their excitement, having forgotten 

to bring in the reading-lamp as usual. 

5 


66 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Beryl loved her father with an almost protecting 
tenderness. His very weakness endeared him to her 
all the more. She bent over him very softly and 
kissed him. 

He had evidently been dreaming, for the word 
“ Alice” sprang to his lips when he opened his eyes. 

Beryl’s filled with rising tears in a moment. 

“Why, my little Beryl is a woman,” said her 
father, looking at her very tenderly. He was too 
dreamy to be demonstrative, but the white dress and 
the roses conjured back a rush of golden recollections. 
“You are more like her than I knew, my darling,” 
he continued. “ Ah, Beryl, if she could have lived 
to see you. It seems only yesterday that Alice Cov- 
entry came to me with roses like those. It is hard 
that even you must have forgotten her.” 

It was almost the first time he had ever spoken of 
his loved and lost, and the girl broke out passion- 
ately, “Father, dearest father, I shall never, never 
forget. I shall know her among all the rest when I 
see her again.” 

“God bless you, my Beryl,” he said with deep 
meaning. “ Go and be bright and happy, just as she 
was, always the merriest of them all.” 

Somehow, Beryl felt as if she had been in a sanct- 
uary when she went back to her stepmother, and 
there was a sweet softness in her blue eyes. 


THE VICARAGE. 


67 


Her father, with a touch of compunction for the 
wrong he had perhaps unwittingly committed toward 
this loving daughter, prayed earnestly, “ Lead her 
not into temptation, but deliver her from evil.” 


CHAPTER IV. 


A FRESH PAGE. 


had been no mere pretence that had caused 
t ^ Arthur Farrant to make the well-worn ex- 

^ cuse of a headache to prevent his dining on 

the night that had brought his wife a fortune. A 
violent nerve pain that left him white and prostrate 
succeeded the horrible silent struggle to keep up ap- 
pearances and not to let even his own special servant 
guess that anything unusual had occurred. The 
very pain was almost a relief to him. It deadened 
somewhat the mental torture that was so much more 
exquisite. 

Lying in his room alone, after giving strict orders 
that he was not to be disturbed, he was at least able 
to nerve himself to face the future. Perhaps one of 
the worst stings of his affliction lay in the fact that 
he had so perpetually to assume a serene cheerfulness 
he was far from feeling. He used to long to be able 
of his own power to be solitary at will, instead of 
having hourly to mortify his pride by asking for 
every trifling service to be rendered by the hands of 


A FRESH PAGE. 


69 


others. People usually pity invalids or cripples, but 
they rarely realize what that constant galling neces- 
sity to be under obligation means to an independent 
spirit. It was not without a very special meaning 
that a great reward was promised to the meek. 
Verily they deserve the inheritance that shall surely 
be theirs. 

To manly, active Arthur Farrant his fate had at 
first seemed unbearable. Now he had already learnt 
that there is in truth no such word, although he 
hardly recognized the divineness of his unknown 
Teacher. 

“ Philippa never loved me, or she could not have 
dealt me such a blow. She is still young, so beauti- 
ful, and rich, yet tied to an impotent log like me.” 

Just for a short hour, in the dusky twilight, the 
grimmest of all temptations overwhelmed him. If 
he could but die, the Gordian knot would be so easily 
cut. There were means even for one as helpless as 
he. Not poison; he could never obtain any. All 
his money would not procure him enough to kill a 
rat. The watchful doctor or his devoted servant 
would easily have their suspicions aroused if he 
asked for such a thing. 

But his eyes fell on a little dagger on the table 
beside him, which he used as a paper-cutter. He 
drew it from its finely inlaid sheath of tortoiseshell 


70 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


and silver, and looked long at it. It conjured up his 
first night in Venice, a summer night when the 
twinkle of a hundred guitars echoed on the Grand 
Canal, and he, with two or three lively friends, had 
made the gondolier take them down the darkest, 
most mysterious-looking waterways, just to feel the 
enchantment of the time and of the place. Then 
they had strolled awhile up and down the dim streets, 
so narrow and so full of little, glittering shops, and 
he had bought the dagger from a dark, handsome 
woman whose black eyes had flashed as she said, “A 
true Corsican, signor, one that has killed, it may be, 
many — that would kill your enemy, your rival, in a 
moment.” 

He had laughed then, and had said, as much in 
thankfulness as in jest, “As to enemies, I have 
none.” Alas! as he looked at the bright, narrow 
blade, it seemed as if he had now one most bitter 
enemy — himself — and one friend only. 

He had often asked himself whether he feared 
death, and the answer had always been a really hon- 
est negative. He could not, for Philippa’s sake, 
exactly ask for a long life, yet until now he had been 
content, even almost happy, thanks to his own in- 
herently wholesome nature. He had not longed, as 
the model invalid is supposed to do, for a “better 
world.” He made the utmost of the one he was in. 


A FRESH PAGE. 71 

and still thought it a pleasant place, with its kind 
faces, its good friends, and its sunshine. 

But now the sun would shine no longer, and his 
few pleasures would lose their savor. It had been 
all for money, miserable money, that Philippa had 
feigned the trembling of the white hand he had 
clasped in his, the mist over the eyes that had met 
his own, filled, he fancied, with a very angel’s lovely 
compassion and self-sacrifice. Pool that he had 
been, blind fool, to think what he had thought until 
the rending of the veil. 

If he ended the weary fight at its very onset, she 
would be free. She might even pity him when she 
knew that he was ready to lay down his life for her, 
to add it to the other gifts that had not bought her 
heart. It would be so easy. He had always thought 
of suicide as an inexplicable thing. Now it suddenly 
lost its former aspect altogether, and looked almost 
reasonable. If he went on living, they must sepa- 
rate. There would be much that would be unpleas- 
ant for Philippa to endure as wife, yet not a wife. 

If he yielded to the impulse that was rapidly be- 
coming a resolution, he would be judged leniently 
enough. “Poor fellow! Miserable position to be 
in.” He could hear the not unfeeling remarks that 
would be made. A nine days’ wonder in Northbent, 
an hour’s topic at the clubs, and then nothing more. 


72 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


In the falling shadows the words of the hymn he 
had said at his mother’s knee came back like an echo : 

‘ ‘ Teach me to live, that I may dread 
The grave as little as my bed. ” 

Well, he had tried and failed to make the most of 
life, and it had practically ended. He did not dread 
the quiet churchyard; but what came after? 

“ Teach me to die, that so I may 
Rise glorious at the awful day.” 

He dropped the dagger with a start. A sudden 
certainty that there was a heaven, and that it was 
no place for cowards who flinched against the buffet- 
ings of an adverse fortune, made him pause. He 
was not much of a reader, but somewhere out of the 
past a single line every one knows flashed across his 
brain : 

“ They also serve who only stand and wait. ” 

It is the hardest thing of all to do. Soldiers who 
would have charged with the Six Hundred, or sailors 
who would have manned the Revenge sometimes 
lose all their courage when the horrible order comes 
for passive inactivity. “ To wait patiently” — all the 
history of a million martyrs is summed up in that 
phrase, and Arthur Farrant elected to be of these. 

He felt a relief when he had come to this decision. 


A FRESH PAGE. 


73 


He would see Philippa to-morrow, and tell her she 
was free. There should be no repining, no weak 
grief. She had not faltered in telling him the truth. 
He would not shrink in making the sacrifice de- 
manded of him. Just for a moment, a sudden vision 
of Allaronde without its mistress made him wince; 
but, after all, what was the utmost anguish of lone- 
liness to that awful solitude when tv/o souls were as 
apart as theirs? 

Harold Buchanan had privately given orders to 
Manners, the servant, never to run the risk of dis- 
turbing his master’s rest by telling him any exciting 
news in the evening. So the worthy fellow kept his 
word, by a mighty effort, whilst preparing for the 
night, and it was not until after Arthur had slept 
like a tired boy far into the morning, that he heard 
that his wife had rescued little Fay Sarel from 
drowning in the canal. 

Then he thanked God humbly that he still lived. 
Surely, if Philippa dared thus to risk herself for an 
unknown child, she must be better than he believed. 

The servants exaggerated the story until it assumed 
grandiose proportions. Servants love dearly to im- 
press their listeners, and Manners was not at all 
likely to lose a chance for making the most of an 
important event, especially as he had felt compelled 
to keep it to himself so long. 


74 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Once more Arthur could view her as a tender- 
hearted woman. That dreadful, lurid picture of a 
beautiful actress, lying to God and to himself at the 
very altar, faded away. If they must part, at least 
he would be able to love and honor her as of old, to 
think of her with the old tender homage. To find 
that only the feet of the idol were of clay was worth 
so much, after the desolate yearning for the lost ideal 
of last night, that he almost felt as if the whole had 
been restored untouched. 

‘‘The mistress is quite well, sir, this morning. 
She sent early to ask if you had had a good night,” 
concluded Manners. 

That little attention touched him deeply, as the 
merest crumb of kindness from Philippa always did. 

“ She told me to say, sir, that she breakfasted early 
in her own room, and has gone out riding.” 

So Arthur had his chair wheeled away into a quiet 
corner in the woodland beyond the garden, where 
there would be no danger of their being overheard, 
and awaited, with a calmness that surprised himself, 
the interview that was to decide so much. He had 
not even brought his dog, so that one or two young 
rabbits came flirting their white tails very close to 
him, and he even found himself taking his usual 
naturalist’s interest in their rapid movements and 
pretty gambols. 


A FRESH PAGE. 


75 


While he lay there waiting with enforced patience, 
Philippa was riding through the lanes, where, in one 
or two favored places, the hedges were still allowed 
to grow tall enough to be wreathed with wild roses. 
She was a creature of moods, intensely influenced by 
weather, as are so many highly strung organizations. 
There was something in the freshness of the air, the 
blueness of the sky, and her abounding sense of life 
and health, that made her inclined to push aside the 
complications of yesterday and trust to the impulse 
of the moment to guide her, if anything occurred to 
make definite action immediately necessary. 

After all, England, in a fine June, was endurable, 
and though North bent was dull enough, Allaronde 
was a pretty house, and she should, perhaps, when 
it came to the point, be sorry to leave it. She felt 
suddenlj^ that it was one thing to dream vaguely of 
beginning a new and emancipated existence, and 
quite another to practically execute any such scheme. 
There had been just that element of uncertainty in 
her early girlhood that made her value the shelter of 
a safe home. People were apt to say disagreeable 
things of the most blameless women living apart 
from their husbands, and, true or not, Philippa hated 
to be regarded by the world at large with any senti- 
ment but that of respectful admiration. 

She felt for the first time that there would be some- 


76 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


thing attractive in the knowledge that, with a for- 
tune of her own, she would be spoken of as ‘‘conse- 
crating her life” to Arthur, if she elected to remain. 
That it would not really be the case she was w^ell 
aware, but she felt again a flattered sense that she 
must have moral excellence of a striking sort, if she 
could contemplate such a line of conduct. 

She had saved a child’s life when its own mother 
had not dared to do so. That fact was surely one 
which it was excusable to regard with complacency. 
She would go and call on Mrs. Sarel in the afternoon, 
although her dulness was a foregone conclusion. 
Now she came to think of it, “ The Little Convales- 
cent,” which some of her neighbors admired so much 
at the Academy, must have been painted by this 
very Adrian Sarel. She found herself disappointed 
that it should be the case. The man looked as if he 
were above the dead, stagnant level of commonplace, 
and what in the world could be more banal than a 
pale child sitting up in bed? 

Yet she was forced to admit that he was capable 
at any rate of admiring better things, when, five 
minutes later, she met him alone. She pulled up 
her horse in a moment with an inquiry for Fay, and 
whilst Adrian answered her with assurances that the 
cold bath had no ill effects, she noted how he studied 
her, and how obviously she came triumphantly out 


A FRESH PAGE. 


77 


of the ordeal. There was no suspicion of the offen- 
sive optical homage some men pay to every pretty 
woman. It was the expression of an artist’s satis- 
faction in a thing of beauty, and could not be dis- 
pleasing even to her fastidious and exacting taste. 

Under an oak tree that cast lights and shadows 
over her clear-cut features, with a rich color on her 
cheeks and a light in her eyes, she was queenly 
enough, sitting her handsome horse gracefully in the 
dark green habit that looked as if it were moulded to 
the superb curves of her figure. They chatted to- 
gether for a minute or two, long enough for Adrian 
to decide to re-paint or destroy “ Medea. ” 

“ Perhaps you will be at Mrs. Bunting’s dance to- 
night?” she questioned, gathering up her reins to 
start. 

“Yes, we are asked,” said Adrian, instantly de- 
ciding to go. 

“Then good-by for the present. We shall prob- 
ably meet there.” 

For all her affected indifference, Philippa enjoyed 
impressing people. She was perfectly aware of her 
own picturesqueness under the oak, and liked Adrian 
Sarel all the better because he was capable of genu- 
ine, critical appreciation. He was not a happy-look- 
ing man, she decided, though she did not in the least 
guess what it was that gave him his rather singular 


78 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


expression of melancholy. It was not the mere fric- 
tion of the struggle to live; it was the baffled artist 
ever inwardly protesting against the misuse of his 
talent. 

Philippa went straight to her husband whom she 
returned. As she walked up the woodland path, 
with her habit gathered in one slender hand, Arthur 
Farrant realized, with a throb of pain, how abso- 
lutely independent of him she was now. It had been 
a joy to him to compass her with luxury. She could 
not lean upon a helpless cripple as other women did 
on their husbands, but at least he could give her sur- 
roundings that satisfied her material wishes. The 
money that had come to her so unexpectedly would, 
indeed, have caused a gulf to broaden between them, 
even had she received the news otherwise. 

But there was a look on Arthur Farrant’s face 
that made her suddenly lean over and give him one 
of the kisses that had been so rare between them. 
The victory of the night had set its indefinable seal. 
It unnerved him completely. 

“Philippa, my wife,” he said brokenly, “what 
does this mean? I am here to give you back your 
freedom, to tell you to leave me, and to trust me to 
shield your fair fame before the world in doing so. 
Last night you let me know the truth. I have learnt 
that it was best. I dared not look forward into the 


A FRESH PAGE. 


79 


utter darkness of the future, but I shall not fear now. 
I shall remember that you pitied me, that the woman 
who nobly risked her life for the sake of a child could 
give compassion even to him who so wronged her. 
My dear, I ought not to have let you do it. You 
were so young. It was my selfishness that made me 
yield. And I thought I should die so soon. I could 
bear all until I knew what my life meant for you. I 
ask you to forgive me before we part for ever, and to 
let that parting take place as soon as possible. I can 
make all the necessary arrangements quickly.” 

It did seem to Philippa as if the events of yester- 
day had, after some wholly inexplicable fashion, 
changed her very nature. What had become of that 
burning desire to be alone and to be free? What 
prompted her to act again, as she had done before 
with such fatal results, from the momentary better 
impulse? She spoke now in the low voix d’or that 
was a more potent charm than her beauty itself, and 
which she could use with so exquisite an effect. 

“ Arthur, you are too noble, too chivalrous. It is 
I who ask forgiveness. I will never leave you. Let 
us forget this cloud, and ‘God send us many years of 
sunshine days. ’ ” She felt the aptness of her own 
quotation, and was pleased with it. 

“Amen,” said her husband with his whole soul, 
and then there was a pause, in which Arthur vowed 


80 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


again never to vex her by a word of repining, to do 
his utmost to make her happy and to be worthy of 
her. 

She played with the great tawny collie that had 
found its way to her feet. She seemed infected by a 
sudden and unwonted spirit of girlish gayety that 
became her, because every part she played was 
played so perfectly. She laughed and talked until 
lunch-time with unusual and infectious vivacit3’, 
making Arthur humbly thankful for the undeserved 
reward that his resistance of last night’s temptation 
had so swiftly brought him. 

It was a simny, untroubled morning, one of those 
rare moments when convention and even work are 
forgotten, and only the summer loveliness is fully 
remembered. 

There are natures like Philippa Farrant’s, that 
deliberately push aside responsibility and moral 
effort. But there comes a time when, however re- 
belliously, they must take up their burden like the 
rest, and then it is overwhelming. 

In the afternoon she paid her promised call at Lat- 
tice Close, but Mrs. Sarel was not at home, and in 
the evening she dressed with her usual care and 
splendor for Mrs. Beresford Bunting’s ball. 

The Beresford Buntings were not in the very least 
like the parvenus of accepted tradition. They were 


A FRESH PAGE. 


81 


not in any way aggressively vulgar, and seldom or 
never dropped their H’s. Mrs. Bunting had been 
a pretty girl, and still dressed as one, and her chief 
failing, like her husband’s, was her dulness. Money 
and dulness are very often allied, and their union 
does not breed boredom in such instances, as it so 
speedily would with intelligent people. Mrs. Bunt- 
ing had no sort of an idea that she was a dull wo- 
man. Unhappily, it was not possible for those 
brought in contact with her to share the same bliss- 
ful ignorance.” 

Mr. Bunting did not notice that the men who 
smoked his cigars and drank his liquors yawned 
whilst they did so. He did not brag more than 
many much better-bred persons, but where the cloven 
hoof peeped out was in his perpetual acceptance of 
the infallibility of pounds, shillings, and pence, and 
the futility of such trifles as art or science or litera- 
ture. He would tell a rising Action-writer that he 
never read novels, with an honest conviction that it 
was a merit on his own part, and was more shocked 
to hear that a City friend had actually had the weak- 
ness to allow his son to become a violinist than if the 
same had misappropriated funds. 

He was still young, though somewhat stout and 
florid, and was perfectly satisfied with himself, his 

house, and his wife, though he treated that lady in 
6 


82 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


public With the oddly accentuated indifference some 
Englishmen think it manly or dignified to assume. 

To-night they were privately nervous, but out- 
wardly calm. The fine old house they had ‘‘re- 
stored” rather too much and furnished after the 
latest fashions in upholstery, was banked with as 
many orchids and carnations as could be procured. 
Koses would have been prettier — they always are — 
but then roses are cheap in June, and therefore 
inadmissible. 

Beryl Millington’s heart beat high when the ram- 
shackle village fly stopped at the illumined entrance, 
and she glanced away into the park, where an end- 
less perspective of fairy lights gleamed red, green, 
and blue. She was rather frightened at the gor- 
geousness of the bedroom where she took off her 
white shawl, but plucked up courage when she ar- 
rived at the ball-room, bright with electric stars, and 
heard the “Blue Hungarians” striking up the first 
waltz. 

What is it that makes the difference between Hun- 
garian playing and that of any other nationality? 
There is a spirit, a gladness sometimes sobering into 
sudden pathos, a wild abandonment in the strains. 
The men play as if their instruments were part of 
themselves, as if they had no thought but to urge 
the flying feet of the dancers. 


A FRESH PAGE. 


83 


Beryl was not imaginative enough to feel all the 
originality and grace of it, but its infectious spirit 
called a pretty pink flush to her cheeks and a sparkle 
to her eyes. Mrs. Bunting had a vague idea that 
she ought to do something for her, so introduced her 
to one of those pale, dismal little men who are always 
plentiful at dances, especially in the London suburbs. 
He condescendingly asked poor Beryl, who had come 
very early, if she would “care to try the floor.” She 
was desperately nervous of beginning when so few 
were dancing, but did not like to refuse. 

Her small partner could do this one thing really 
well, and in half a minute she was whirling along 
the parquet floor so smoothly and gracefully that 
serveral male wallflowers looked on approvingly, and 
one or two went so far as to ask to be introduced to 
this fresh maiden, whose dress, rather shorter, per- 
haps, than it ought to have been, showed such a 
pretty pair of feet and shoes. 

Mrs. Millington rustled about, shaking hands with 
everybody, restlessly eager to catch the eyes of the 
more important Northbent ladies, and ruthless in 
interrupting their conversations when she fancied 
she had done So. She was annoyed to perceive that 
Harold Buchanan was very late in coming, so late, 
in fact, that when he did arrive he found Beryl sit- 
ting out in the conservatory with quite an experi- 


84 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


enced air, and chattering away most cheerfully to a 
very young partner, who had privately decided she 
was the jolliest girl he had ever met, and relieved 
his feelings by working her little, old-fashioned fan 
to and fro with more vigor than grace. 

‘‘ I hope you have kept me a dance. Miss Milling- 
ton,” he said, with his pleasant smile. 

“Oh, I am so sorry,” replied Beryl with unfeigned 
regret; “my card is quite full now. Just see,” and 
with a little look of girlish satisfaction she showed it 
to him. 

“You evidently forgot me altogether,” said Bu- 
chanan, prolonging the conversation to get an assur- 
ance that the shoes fitted. “Not a bit too small, 
after all,” he decided with admiration. 

“Why, Doctor Buchanan, I should never have 
thought of such a thing.” 

She took him quite in earnest, and he turned away 
much amused. Evidently she was very young yet. 
But he had never liked Beryl so well as when he 
went back to be captured by Mrs. Millington, lean- 
ing on the arm of a neighboring vicar, who wore an 
expression of resignation. 

“You should see my strawberries,” she was saying 
complacently, “beautiful strawberries, and such a 
size. I shouldn’t like to hurt Mrs. Bunting’s feel- 
ings, but, really, I see none as fine to-night.” 


A FRESH PAGE, 


85 


The sight of Buchanan made her stop short, and 
gave her companion an opportunity of escape he did 
not fail to seize. 

‘‘ I hope you’ve seen Beryl,” she began. “ Danced 
every dance, and quite admired. Ah, it reminds 
me of my own first ball.” 

“ I was disappointed to find Miss Millington’s card 
quite full,” said Buchanan, knowing well how an- 
noyed Mrs. Millington would be. 

“Card full!” said that lady. “What nonsense! 
It is quite ridiculous. Of course she will be only too 
pleased to dance with you.” 

“ I am sure I should not presume to expect her to 
begin by breaking her engagements,” and, with a 
bow, he vanished, only to be seen in the distance by 
disgusted Mrs. Millington, who decided, with her 
usual thorough want of tact, to take her stepdaugh- 
ter well to task on the subject of dancing with the 
wrong partners the very next morning. 

Meanwhile she devoted herself to Mrs. Adrian 
Sarel, who was sitting alone, looking at the dancers 
and wishing herself at home. Mrs. Millington felt 
it her duty to cultivate her husband’s parishioners, 
she said, and fulfilled that duty now by asking Isabel 
every imaginable question. She answered gently 
and patiently enough, but was thinking how much 
she should like to go out into the garden and see all 


86 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


the lights among the roses in their dewy midnight 
loveliness. Balls were all very well for girls, but 
not for married women, she decided rather wearily. 

It certainly was much pleasanter in the cool, night 
air, where a band was playing the “Venusberg” 
music from “ Tannhauser,” presumably as an accom- 
paniment to a feeble trickle of commonplace talk. 
There were only two persons who seemed to be lis- 
tening, Philippa Farrant and Adrian Sarel, who 
stood silently side by side. 

Philippa had refused to dance, but not to stroll 
about in the dangerous midsummer midnight. By 
this time all Northbent knew that Mrs. Farrant had 
had a fortune left her, and Adrian had heard the 
news not without a touch of jealous wonder why so 
much was given to some, so little to him. 

What a glorious woman this was, in the diamonds 
and brocade that merely seemed like the frame of a 
splendid picture. Was she happy? he asked his 
heart curiously. What were the thoughts that made 
her ejxpression so sad, so wistful? She stood statu- 
esque in the half-light until the “ Pilgrims’ Chorus” 
carried away the last bars of the tripping, evil rap- 
ture, changed by consummate genius to such a sob 
of despair. 

Sarel broke the pause that just then was eloquent. 
“The worst of ‘Tannhauser’ is that, in spite of 


A FRESH PAGE. 87 

oneself, it sets one dreaming, and not tiie wisest 
dreams.” 

It was her own thought, though she did not say so. 
‘*I want to give my husband a birthday present,” 
she began unexpectedly, “and; the time is rather 
short. Will you forgive my asking here if you can 
paint my portrait within the next two months? I 
hear you do paint portraits sometimes, and it would 
suit me best to have it done in Northbent. I have 
seen pictures of yours in the Academy. I do not 
take you quite on trust.” 

Adrian looked at her with a cynical smile. “ You 
have seen ‘The Little Convalescent,’ I suppose. Be- 
lieve me, Mrs. Farrant, I am sorry it should be so.” 

“It is very pretty,” she premised; “but yet ” 

She did not quite know how she meant to finish her 
sentence. Adrian spared her any doubt. 

“ I do not need to be told that it is poor, mean stuff 
for a man with a brain. But beggars cannot be 
choosers, and the world likes ‘The Little Convales- 
cent,’ and buys it, when, as an honest worker, I 
should starve. You honor me by your commission. 
I shall do my very utmost to prove worthy of your 
confidence. Perhaps some day, if you will allow 
me, I will show you an attempt or two at better 
things. I have not always been a bondslave among 
the Philistines.” 


88 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


“ Don’t we all live in Philistia here?” said Phil- 
ippa, with a gesture of her hand that included her 
surroundings. “ Sometimes I doubt whether there is 
any other world.” 

But, in spite of her doubts, she felt that something 
new had passed into her life on the wings of the pas- 
sionate music. The idea of the portrait had come 
suddenly, like an inspiration. It interested her pro- 
spectively. She should, of course, tell her husband, 
who was sure to be perfectly satisfied. 

She went to bed in an unwonted and fresh con- 
dition of serene contentment. It charmed her, and 
she was disposed to enjoy that charm without ana- 
lyzing it. She looked upon it as the reward for her 
conduct to her husband. It really was worth while 
to be dutiful, if it brought such pleasant self-compla- 
cency. It had been a long day, but it had ended 
very well. 


CHAPTER V. 


TRIFLES. 



pPTER the 557^ had jolted out of the rather 
long, narrow drive leading to the Vicarage, 
Betty again, and this time indefinitely, post- 
poned the mending of her tattered sleeve. She at 
once began to help Bevan to mix the rum and coarse 
sugar that were to lure unwary moths to drunken- 
ness and subsequent destruction. She was thor- 
oughly in her element, and it was proverbial that 
“Butterfingers,” as the boys called her, from her 
known propensity for dropping and breaking frail 
articles, could set a tiny moth with mathematical 
exactitude and neatness. 

Exeats were rare things, and to be enjoyed to the 
utmost. To-morrow both boys would have to return 
to school, and was it likely that she should waste 
such an ideal sugaring night in darning a jagged 
rent? 

To those uneviable persons who have no intimate 
knowledge of natural history and its world of won- 
ders, insect hunting may appear uninteresting. But 
89 


90 


THE POWER OF THE DOQ. 


to the better-informed it is sport of a highly exciting 
sort, with the added advantage of being usually con- 
ducted under delicious circumstances. 

The thick shrubberies of the garden and the little 
copse in the meadow next the glebe became places of 
mystery under their night aspect. The brother and 
sister, who in their own odd fashion were devoted to 
each other, waudered about hour after hour, uncon- 
scious how fast time was passing, and quite regard- 
less of the heavy dew. 

Betty had saved up her pocket-money for a month 
to buy surreptitiously that bottle of rum. She felt 
her reward had come for much self-denial when a 
rare underwing dropped intoxicated into Bevan’s 
bottle. Bevan was always penniless, and as, accord- 
ing to Betty’s unformulated creed, it was natural for 
sisters to give up everything to the boys, it did not 
occur to her that he might have contributed. For- 
tune favored them, and captures were numerous. 

“ Fancy, that poor beggar Brown is in London for 
the exeat — beastly London. Well, I wouldn’t be in 
his shoes. No sugaring there ; nothing earthly to do 
except the pantomime, and that isn’t on now.” 

“ I’d rather catch these underwings than go to fifty 
pantomimes,” said Betty fervently. “Oh, Bevan, 
isn’t it a blessing I’m only fourteen. I shall so hate 
being grown up.” 


TRIFLED. 


91 


“ Never miod, Bet, you’ll always be a downright 
good sort, whatever age you are.” 

Bevan was not in the least given to paying com- 
pliments, but the appearance of that bottle of rum 
had melted even his fraternal reserve. 

Betty and Bevan had nothing unusual about them. 
They were simply a fresh English boy and girl, su- 
premely and healthily happy. They did not realize 
how, perhaps, in after life the memory of such even- 
ings would shine out clear and distinct. 

Later years may bring love and enjoyment on their 
wings, but they cannot bring back the ineffable 
freshness and charm of those pleasures that are so 
simple, that familiar intercourse that is so perfectly 
unrestrained. A childhood in the country is rich 
indeed. It stocks the memory with such a picture- 
gallery of delights. Many a busy and successful 
man, many a gifted woman, looks back to those 
long days spent with Nature as the best of all. They 
held so much, and were so different from the brief, 
hurried days we speed through later. 

It was very late when they retraced their steps, and 
even Betty decided it would be wiser to go home by 
the road than wade through the mowing grass 
of the glebe and leave telbtale tracks. Twelve 
o’clock tolled out solemnly from the church tower, 
and if the servants were too good-natured to report 


92 


THE POWER OF THE DOQ. 


them, Mrs. Millington’s suspicions would doubtless 
be aroused. 

Something gleamed on the white, dusty road, 
which curious Betty found to be a letter. It was too 
dark for reading even its address, so she put it in her 
pocket to see what it might be. 

The vicarage did not boast a latch-key, so the 
faithful Keziah was sitting up for the ball-goers. 
She had left the front door unlocked, and fallen 
soundly asleep. They slipped off their wet boots, 
and went softly up-stairs. 

“Good night, old girl. We’ve had a jolly good 
time, thanks to that rum of yours,” whispered Bevan, 
and then Betty shut the door that would creak, as 
doors invariably creak when no one wishes them to 
do so. 

“ I’ll get up early and mend my dress,” she resolved 
virtuously as she took it off. 

The letter, or, rather, envelope, fell out of her 
pocket as she did so. It had no address, and con- 
tained only a slip of paper — a bill. Betty fairly 
jumped when she saw what it was : “ Bennet and Co., 
Bootmakers. White satin embroidered shoes, twenty- 
five shillings. Paid.” Twenty-five shillings! It 
sounded a fortune indeed to Betty. It was the bill 
for Beryl’s mysterious present, she felt certain, but 
how provoking that there should be no name with it. 


TRIFLES. 


93 


Wild visions of going to London and making in- 
quiries of Bennet and Company rather commended 
themselves to her ready imagination. 

Stay, though ; there was something full of unintel- 
ligible words written on the back in a writing that 
was very familiar. 

Betty wrote abominably herself, and in a fit of de- 
spair had made an effort to copy a handwriting she 
happened to admire — a missive in which Doctor 
Harold Buchanan had “regretted that a prior en- 
gagement” would prevent his attending one of Mrs. 
Millington’s little musical evenings. Somehow, he 
always had prior engagements when summoned to 
the vicarage “at homes.” 

“I’ve got it this time,” said Betty. “I said I 
should find out, and I have. But wild horses shall 
not drag it out of me. I will tell Berry. Perhaps 
she knows it already. Perhaps he told her himself. 
Perhaps ■” 

Betty aspired to be a novel-writer in the future. 
She had a quick wit, and jumped promptly to a not 
very surprising conclusion, which was, however, in- 
correct. Her cheeks grew very pink. 

“Berry did look pretty,” she thought. “Perhaps 
they are dancing together. Suppose sometime ” 

Even to herself she did not quite care to pursue her 
thought, but it was with her head full of suppositions 


94 THE POWER OF THE DOG. 

and the precious paper under her pillow that she fell 
asleep. She had meant to stay awake to hear all the 
news, but she did not stir when Beryl, still rosy and 
bright, came in at half-past three. 

It had been a wonderful ball. It seemed as if it 
were a very long time since she had stood before the 
little looking-glass, and yet the last dance had come 
too soon. Every one had been good to her. She had 
had so many partners. Balls were very delightful 
things, after all. She put away her silk dress quite 
reverentially, and rejoiced to find that her shoes were 
scarcely soiled. Her pretty shoes ! A vague wonder 
concerning them was her last waking thought. 

Betty was rather disgusted to be roused by Keziah^s 
seven o^clock rap at the door. She had intended to 
be up in time to do all sorts of things, and now, un- 
less for the first time in her life she dressed without 
loitering, she would probably be too late for break- 
fast. 

“Well, Berry,” she began eagerly, “was it nice? 
Did you dance much? Was everybody very fine?” 

Betty always asked her questions in breathless 
batches, and then pulled up abruptly to wait for 
answers on the same principle. 

“ It was lovely,” said Beryl rather sleepily. “ Such 
flowers, such music; and, only think, Betty, I danced 
every dance. There’s my progranime.” 


TRIFLES. 


95 


Betty took up the pretty blue card, and looked 
eagerly at the list of names on it. 

“ What a lot of strangers,” she said. “ And Doctor 
Buchanan? Wasn’t he there, or didn’t he ask you 
to dance?” 

“ Why, yes, he did, but my card was quite full. 
People were so kind. One little man asked me for 
three. He Was rather melancholy, and seemed to 
take no interest in anything, but he could dance. I 
never felt anything like it.” 

“ Now, Beryl, did you find out anything about the 
shoes?” 

“ Why, how was it possible? But I believe mam- 
ma was doing everything she could. She has got 
them on the brain, that’s the worst of it.” 

“Berry,” said Betty, pausing in her hair brush- 
ing, “I’ve found out. I said I should. Bevan 
and I were sugaring till ever so late. We had 
a grand time, and caught a magnificent under- 
wing. We did not get home till past twelve, and 
then the glebe meadow was so wet we went 
roimd by the road. I picked up something — this,” 
and she waved her treasure triumphantly above 
her. 

Beryl’s last vestige of sleepiness vanished in a 
moment. 

“Oh, Betty, tell me directly. Show it me.” 


96 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Betty gave her the paper, and laughed heartily at 
her face of amazement. 

“ I always did say you were slow at finding out 
things. Look at the back.” 

Beryl did so, and for a moment looked more puz- 
zled than ever. Then she too recognized a very un- 
mistakable handwriting. But she waited for Betty 
to speak, being overcome by the discovery. 

“ Doctor Buchanan went to town that day. I heard 
him tell father he was going to some old meeting or 
other. Depend upon it, he passed along the road 
and heard what we were saying. Well, I always 
thought him nice; now I know he’s a regular brick,” 
said Betty with decision. 

But Beryl was blushing hotly, and was not alto- 
gether pleased. What could have made him do such 
a thing in such a way, if he had done it? She looked 
at the paper again. Scientific notes, without a doubt, 
and nobody else in Northbent was scientific. They 
had evidently been carefully made on the only scrap 
of available paper. 

“ Betty, promise me faithfully you will never, never 
tell anybody,” she broke out, with an urgency of 
anxiety there was no mistaking. “We may be 
wrong, after all. We are not sure.” 

“Ah, but I am sure. However, if by ‘anybody’ 
you mean mamma. I’ll promise.” 


TRIFLES. 


97 


The prayer bell put an end to this discussion, and 
Betty hurried down. 

Beryl felt licensed to be late. She wanted to be 
alone and think over the affair quietly. As she 
plaited her soft hair, she wished with all her heart 
that Harold Buchanan had not done this thing. She 
should feel so shy and awkward with him, and then 
— dreadful thought ! — the paper ought to be sent or 
given back. She was still grateful, but she hated 
secrets, and this one would be such a burden. And 
to think that she had not even danced with 
him! 

When at last she went down she found her step- 
mother seated at an empty breakfast-table. 

Mrs. Millington always piqued herself upon get- 
ting up at precisely the same time after a party. She 
was quite as apt as the rest of the world to be tired 
and cross, so that other people wished she would stay 
in bed as they did, instead of tacitly reproaching 
them by her punctuality, and working off her fatigue 
in irritability and fault-finding. It is doubtless a 
virtuous thing to rise early, but it is a pity this vir- 
tue is so rarely practised without causing an undue 
amount of self-glorification. 

She looked sallower than ever after her late hours, 
and was clearly in a bad temper. She had had a 
passage of arms with Betty, and, as usual, had 
7 


98 


THE POWER OF THE DOG, 


been rather worsted by that brisk adept at repartee. 
Her greeting was ominous. 

I am glad to see you at last, Beryl, though such 
irregularity as this is enough to upset the house for 
the whole day. I want to speak to you very seri- 
ously. You are grown up now, but I feel it my 
duty to tell you I was anything but pleased with 
your conduct last night. ” 

Relieved, but wondering. Beryl was silent, await- 
ing an explanation. 

‘‘ Doctor Buchanan came to me and told me that 
you had refused to dance with him. Now, Beryl, I 
want to know how you could be so rude to a friend 
of mine.” 

Beryl grew hot. Blushes showed so easily on her 
fair skin, and that mere name was enough to make 
her uncomfortable. 

“ He did not ask me till quite late, mamma, and I 
had no dances disengaged.” 

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Millington, with tartness. 
“ I saw you dancing five or six times with that stupid 
little Mr. Skelton, a mere boy.” 

“It was only three waltzes,” urged Beryl, “and 
when he asked me I had no idea I should have so 
many partners.” 

“I am going to speak plainly to you,” began her 
stepmother. “ Do you think your coming out is an 


TRIFLES. 


99 


expense in new clothes incurred just for your own 
pleasure?” 

Beryl said nothing, and Mrs. Millington continued 
with acrimony, “The object of my taking all this 
trouble is to get you married early. There are four 
girls in this family, and it is my duty — a duty I 
shall not shrink from — to try to see you all settled. 
You are eighteen and when your father dies you will 
not have a shilling, and must go out as a lady help; 
for I am sure you are not clever enough for a gov- 
erness in days when there is so much nonsense about 
certificates. Therefore, when I take you out you 
must make the most of your chances, for Betty will 
be coming on fast.” 

Beryl’s usual equanimity was violently disturbed. 
She was very young for her age. She had not looked 
into the future with the bold eyes of a fashionable 
schoolgirl. She thought of love as something too 
sacred and mysterious to be discussed, of marriage 
not at all. She was shocked at Mrs. Millington’s 
matter-of-fact statement, which to her appeared so 
especially, unattractively blunt. 

“ I am sure I would rather be a maid-of-all-work 
than try to make any one like me in that way,” she 
broke out, full of righteous indignation. “I’ve al- 
ways tried to be good and obedient, but I would 
rather stay at home all my life than go out thinking 


100 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


people were watching me to see what chance I had of 
getting married.” 

“ It is not likely you will marry at all if you go on 
in such a way and show such temper. Doctor Bu- 
chanan is a very estimable young man, and, natu- 
rally, I should have been better pleased to see you 
with him than with that ridiculous boy. Remember 
that, Beryl, and if he asks you to play tennis with 
him at any of the parties I shall be really angry if 
3"ou make these silly excuses. As I said before, you 
must marry early. At your age many a girl is a 
wife.” 

Beryl’s was a naturally sweet disposition, but she 
was roused into well-merited sarcasm. “At any 
rate, you were not, mamma.” 

Mrs. Millington was desperately sensitive to any 
allusion to her own age. “And why?” she retorted, 
almost too angry to get her words out fast enough. 
“Why, because I was taking care of my father.” 

A servant fortunately interrupted this stormy dis- 
cussion, and Beryl ran up-stairs and flung herself on 
her bed, crying bitterly though quietly. 

Oh, if she had been allowed to take care of her 
father, instead of only being regarded as an encum- 
brance. 

It is a hard thing to be the eldest of a family in 
these days, when people are so desperately fearful of 


TRIFLES. 


101 


marriage being a failure that half of them never 
marry at all. Even heiresses are sometimes left to 
wither unsought ; and to look at the serried ranks of 
rosy, cheerful girls devoid of any special gifts or 
graces, is to wonder compassionately what will be 
their after-fate. Happily, most of tliem start with a 
hopeful certainty that they will find Prince Charm- 
ing. It is only as the years go on and no one of the 
kind appears, that they begin to be haunted with 
apprehensions. 

A little later they learn that, nolens volens, the 
single life has to be faced as a certainty in nine cases 
out of ten, without even the pitiful comfort, which 
yet is a comfort, of having loved without return. It 
looks gray and unattractive to those who feel that 
their happiness would have lain in managing a house, 
in cherishing children. They turn wistfully to their 
young married friends. A gulf separates them now. 

Those who have work or art to fill their hours are 
not much to be pitied. They have the second best, 
nay, perhaps the best, fate. But the ordinary, com- 
monplace untalented woman, v/ho finds youth slip- 
ping away and nothing but solitude and poverty 
ahead, surely she merits a most respectful compas- 
sion. It is not her own fault. She could have loved 
and toiled for a husband and children, and been 
richly content. Yet her little efforts to fill the va- 


102 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


cant hours of her long days, ungladdened by any 
hope of change, are often enough laughed at. 

Beryl was essentially a womanly woman. Her 
quiet life was full and interesting to her. She had 
not until to-day learnt to look forward further than 
to the next of those red-lettered festivals that brought 
back the boys. 

Her stepmother’s unrefined nature had always 
been antagonistic to her own, yet, for her father’s 
sake, she had been gentle and submissive. But this 
last command she would never obey. She, her 
mother’s daughter, to lay herself out-^poor child, 
she had little enough idea how — to attract some man 
to marry her? Never. Even in her thoughts she 
did not like to own that Mrs. Millington had almost 
named one person as ‘‘suitable.” The very word 
was abominable. 

“I am not pretty, or clever, or rich,” thought 
Beryl for the first time. Hitherto she bad been too 
much absorbed in her many interests to trouble about 
these facts. “ I should not mind for myself^ but to 
be a burden on poor father or to subsist on mamma — 
no, I cannot, I cannot. Why aren’t girls allowed to 
work like boys? Why am I put into the world at 
all? It cannot be that I am meant to try to make 
some one marry me.” 

Then she thought of some of the girls she knew. 


TRIFLES. 


103 


One had just been married to a man old enough to be 
her father; another to quite a boy, three years 
younger than herself. She would rather die. Oh, 
she wished she was a child again. After all, being 
grown up was very wretched, she decided, drying 
her eyes and remembering that there were half a 
dozen belated duties to be done before she and Bab 
had their daily struggle over “Chickseed without 
Chickweed;” for Bab was very backward in her 
studies. 

Adrian Sarel was inclined to see matters in a pleas- 
anter light when Isabel poured out his coffee — real 
French coffee — on the morning after the ball. He had 
not told his wife of his new commission, although it 
had filled his mind ever since Philippa had offered it. 

There had been a shade of difference in his manner 
to Isabel since the episode of the canal. He had been 
unaware of it, but she had felt it keenly. Exagge- 
rating her own momentary lack of courage into an 
habitual condition, she had been unable to forget it. 
She would so eagerly have welcomed any sign that 
it had not affected Adrian, but no such sign glad- 
dened her. 

She had not looked well at the ball in a dress that 
was unbecoming and, truth to tell, shabby. Adrian 
had felt annoyed that his wife should not hold her 


104 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


own and justify his choice in the eyes of other men. 
Isabel was not in the faintest degree a man’s woman. 
She had married her first love — a rare enough occur- 
rence — and, what is rarer still, she viewed the rest 
of mankind with unaffected indifference, only mak- 
ing exception in favor of the two or three particular 
friends of Randie’s who had been good to him. 

‘‘I have some news for you again. Belle,” said 
Adrian, whom Fay, on tiptoe, was feeding with ripe 
strawberries. “Mrs. Farrant has commissioned me 
to paint her portrait for her.” 

Mrs. Farrant had spoken to Isabel kindly on the 
preceding evening, yet somehow she had not con- 
quered a mistrust of her that was almost dislike. 
She would not have admitted it, and could not have 
explained it, but there was an unacknowledged jeal- 
ousy latent in her heart of this stranger who had 
saved Fay. 

Not jealousy of the ordinary sort. She could not 
doubt, had never doubted, Adrian. It would have 
been so impossible for her even to look at another 
man that she credited him with much of her own 
innocent trust and faith. Besides which, she was 
accustomed to hear him discuss beauty as part of his 
stock-in-trade. But to be reminded of her failure, to 
reflect that another had snatched back her own child 
to safety, wounded her. Necessity had, however, 


TRIFLES. 


105 


made her much too practical not to rejoice in any 
form of answer to that prayer for the daily bread 
which was precarious enough in its more enlarged 
sense. 

“ You will like it, then, Adrian?” she asked timidly, 
understanding by his very voice that he was satisfied. 

“ Like it? I should think so. Belle. I hate paint- 
ing portraits, you know, but I am going to get her 
to let me make a picture of her instead ; then I shall 
enjoy it. I mean to be virtuous and get the second 
‘Convalescent’ on the stocks to-day. But first get 
me Rossetti’s poems and that little American Tenny- 
son, there’s a good girl. I want to hunt subjects.” 

“ Then you won’t paint this morning?” 

“ Not just yet, at any rate.” 

Isabel sighed. More than once or twice Adrian 
had offended important personages by breaking 
agreements concerning pictures through sheer idle- 
ness. The sooner he did the work, the sooner he 
would be paid, and with what thankfulness would 
she see her lean household exchequer replenished. 
She fetched the two well-worn books, and saw 
Adrian establish himself under the cedar in an easy 
chair with a cigarette. Fay sat demurely beside 
him on the grass, spelling out “Alice’s Adventures.” 

Then Isabel went into the house. Randie was 
looking rather pale and heavy-eyed this morning, 


106 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


and said his head ached ; but Adrian, blowing blue 
rings from his cigarette,- only smiled at her ridicu- 
lous anxiety for the child’s little ailments. 

He was in a delightful frame of mind. A picture 
of rare quality, with a beautiful face as its dominant 
note, floated before his eyes. He was very fond of 
poetry ; that is to say, of such poetry as dealt with 
passion and was vivid with color and picturesque 
diction. He would have followed in Rossetti’s foot- 
steps if he had been free, he fancied. He did not 
care about the real. He wanted the ideal. Reality 
was apt to be unsatisfactory and mean. He liked 
luxury and splendor. His tastes had been half 
starved all his life. 

If he could have planned it, he would have had it 
all so different. It was not money he desired, ex- 
actly ; it was enough money not to have to cramp 
and restrict his career by perpetual counting of the 
pence. 

Genius is supposed to thrive upon poverty. Un- 
luckily, it does not, except in the rare cases of those 
elect souls who are not governed by outward circum- 
stances, but who can battle to their own superb goal 
without noticing the incidents of the journey. 

Adrian felt as if he had come upon an oasis in his 
desert. He understood Philippa sufficiently to be 
assured she would not be one of those who would feel 


TRIFLES. 


107 


proud to hang on the walls of the Academy as Mrs. 
Arthur Farrant. He forgot all about “The Little 
Convalescent,” and wandered away into a very satis- 
fying dreamland. He had been a fool to fancy he 
could paint “ Medea” without a model. Of course, 
the pretty face of his fancy, that was so oddly like a 
real one, just wanted the convincing vital spark. 

What should the subject be? Vivien? Guine- 
vere? He could fancy her both these, but she her- 
self might not be willing to be so impersonated. Be- 
sides, they had been painted very often, and never 
successfully. Rossetti might give him newer ideas. 
He took up the little, shabby, foreign-printed book, 
bought years ago in Paris, and turned over its pages, 
reading a few verses from time to time. Fay was 
reading too, and half aloud, but she did not disturb 
him, neither did incongruous extracts from “The 
Walrus and the Carpenter” affect his visions. 

Adrian liked rather theatrical effects of warm re- 
flected light. Flickering flames leapt round a picture 
that was taking form in his imagination— •“ Sister 
Helen,” kneeling before a fire and watching the 
waxen image of her false lover melting before it, 
knowing that he is dying in torment because she has 
dared to sell her own soul for his. 

Another time he would have laughed to scorn the 
mere idea of inducing a lady he scarcely knew to 


108 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


lend him her features to mould into the mask of such 
revenge and such cruelty. At this moment all things 
seemed possible. Life would not be worth living if 
these rare, delicious instants of fresh hope did not 
occur. 

Adrian presently went into the studio, but it was 
only to make the roughest charcoal sketch of the 
composition of “ Sister Helen.” He forgot how many 
sketches that were nothing else he had in his port- 
folios. Absorbed and abstracted, he was lost in a 
dream of creation, in a certainty that this time he 
had caught his ideal and held her. 

Isabel looked in at the open door. She never spoke 
to Adrian when he had that especial look of abstrac- 
tion. But she saw that he was not at work upon his 
commission, and sighed as she turned away. 

Art was perfectly inexplicable to Isabel Sarel. 
Nature she knew and loved intimately. But Adrian 
in certain phases was beyond her comprehension. 
She dreaded those phases. They were always suc- 
ceeded by periods of depression. She acknowledged 
her own ignorance humbly, but was sometimes 
secretly not a little cheered by discovering that, as 
far as pictures were concerned, most people were of 
her opinion. 

Randie did not get better as the day wore on ; two 
bills came in, immediate settlement requested ; Fay 


TRIFLES. 


109 


utterly refused to do her simple lessons; and the in- 
experienced cook spoilt the strawberry jam by burn- 
ing it. Small grievances, perhaps, but important to 
Isabel. She bustled about from nursery to kitchen, 
tired and hot. 

Adrian found the summer morning delicious. Its 
hours went by all too fast. He was to go to Al- 
laronde in the afternoon, but the thought of this par- 
ticular interruption was not unpleasing. 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE PICTURE. 

RTHUR was pleased and touched when Phil- 
ippa, after telling him more of the incidents 
of the ball than she usually condescended to 
do, announced that she had given Adrian Sarel a 
commission to paint her portrait. 

“I am a person of property now,” she said laugh- 
ingly, “and so, for once, I thought I would give 
you a present. I never give you presents.” 

“You gave me yourself. I wanted nothing else.” 

This was the sort of speech Philippa liked, and 
this one emboldened her to continue the subject she 
had been carefully considering. “I expect the sit- 
tings will be fearfully tedious, that is the worst of it. 
I don’t think I should care to go to that comfortless 
cottage day after day,” and she hesitated a moment. 

“ Would he come here, or must an artist paint in 
his own studio?” inquired her husband, always 
pleased at a plan that involved any sort of hospi- 
tality. 

“Will you try to persuade him, for I am not cer- 
110 


THE PICTURE. 


Ill 


tain?” replied Philippa. “ If he consented, we could 
arrange the north drawing-room. The light could 
be made to do, I think.” 

“Well, I know nothing about all that, but I will 
certainly ask him, if you are sure he is a good man. 
I do not want a portrait of you to be a mere daub.” 

Philippa felt ruffled at even this inferred reflection 
upon her judgment. “ I saw a picture of his in the 
Academy,” she continued, with a shade of coldness. 
“ I am not the person to act upon a mere impulse to 
help a poor artist. I do not believe in making art 
a sort of servant to charity.” 

But Arthur was quite satisfied when he heard the 
word “Academy.” He had always accepted a pil- 
grimage to Burlington House as a wearying but 
necessary duty in the days when he was like other 
men, and, if he had thought about the matter at all, 
would readily have accepted the verdicts of the 
Hanging Committee as infallible. In common with 
nine out of every ten Britons, he viewed the Acad- 
emy as the only centre of the art world, and conceived 
that to be hung there was the Ultima Thule of every 
painter’s ambition. There are plenty of people in 
England whose only connection with art is an annual 
acute headache. 

Adrian paid his visit about four o’clock, and was 
taken at once into the garden by Philippa, whom he 


112 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


met strolling in the woods, and who gave him a 
rather reserved welcome, though he satisfied her crit- 
ical taste fully as well as he had done on their previ- 
ous meetings. She liked playing the role of Lady 
Bountiful toward him. She liked to feel how much 
she had in her own hands. It was delightful to be 
thoroughly independent, to know that it was her 
money, and not Arthur’s, that would buy this picture. 

Arthur was in his chair in his usual place under 
the cedar, and Sarel experienced the shock of pained 
surprise common to those who saw him for the first 
time. He was in a bright condition of hope, and as 
he shook the hand held out to him so warmly and 
readily, his own strength gathered an added value 
and importance in his eyes. So this was the hus- 
band. Such women ought not to make such mar- 
riages. 

The subject of the picture was, of course, upper- 
most, and Arthur made his suggestion with an un- 
mistakable earnestness. He did it simply because 
Philippa had appeared to wish it, and because he 
himself was pleased with the idea of watching an 
artist at work. He was fond of pictures, if the sub- 
jects were well within his own range, but he knew 
nothing about Art spelt with a capital and treated as 
an abstraction. 

Sarel put an utterly different construction upon his 


THE PICTURE. 


113 


invitation. “Jealous,” he decided mistakenly. 
“ Afraid to let her out of his own sight.” 

Then he thought of the shabbiness of his own 
home, and of the rough, ugly studio, smelling of 
half-dry mortar and bare of comfort. Philippa, even 
in the guise of Sister Helen, did not suit those sur- 
roundings. 

“ If I might see the room, I could tell at once if the 
light would be good,” he said finally; “and if you 
are quite sure it will not be inconvenient for you to 
have it littered with a painter’s paraphernalia.” 

The announcement of Dr. Buchanan interrupted 
the discussion ; but soon after the greetings had been 
exchanged, Philippa led the way to the north draw- 
ing-room. It was full of flowers and dainty traces 
of her occupation, for in summer its coolness often 
made her choose it in preference to her own boudoir. 

In one comprehending glance Adrian took in the 
amount of thought and taste that had made it so 
perfect in its details. Money can command uphol- 
stery, but no amount of upholstery can give that 
delicate air of individuality that emanates from the 
presence of certain women and makes their dwellings 
places of charm. The great basket of pink poppies 
and grasses, the open piano with a pile of new music, 
the books upon the tiny tables, these manifested the 

touch, but did not constitute it. It was subtler ; it 
8 


114 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


seemed to be in the very air, just touched with the 
faint perfume he had already learnt to associate with 
her. 

‘‘Will it do?” she asked, in the tone in which she 
had spoken of “Tannhauser.” 

Adrian detected the alteration as distinct from that 
of Mrs. Arthur Farrant. It made him alter his own. 
In the garden he had felt at last, and not relished the 
sensation, that he was a poor painter receiving an 
order like any tradesman. This atmosphere was 
different. 

He glanced at an open book with an instinct of 
curiosity. Bound in white vellum, with an elaborate 
silver marker fastened to one page, it was the same 
he had been reading all the morning. There was an 
analogy between them. His Rossetti was shabby 
and tattered, hers a miracle of exquisite paper and 
printing. But the contents were the same. So it 
must be with the two readers. He thought a little 
grimly that the bindings of the two books were some- 
what symbolical. 

But the time was not ripe yet for him to broach 
his petition. Her husband had decided she should 
be painted in her riding-habit. He had a secret 
objection to bare shoulders and arms in pictures, and 
admired his wife most in her outdoor aspect. She 
could not oppose him, but she thought the sugges- 


THE PICTURE. 


115 


tion commonplace, and was vaguely disappointed at 
Adrian’s ready acquiescence. 

“ It will give me a chance to learn her face thor- 
oughly,” he reflected. “Time enough then to tell 
her of my other personal ambition.” 

It seemed more difficult than in the morning. 
Already the ideal had slipped away a little further. 
Still, the present was rich, the future richer, with 
vague, undeflned possibilities of success. As he 
stood and measured his stately subject, the sudden 
joyful sense of power and capacity came back too 
him. He was an artist in the presence of his model, 
not a poor man taking something like alms of a 
wealthy woman. 

It was very soon decided that the portrait should 
be begun within a day or two, yet they still lingered. 
Adrian was struck with her wide knowledge of the 
newest, freshest phase of modern art and modem 
criticism. She spoke of the two or three living men 
who still paint pictures with the restrained fervor 
of a cultivated, carefully weighed enthusiasm. 

“I wonder you are not a painter yourself,” Adrian 
said, recognizing her intelligence, her feeling for 
what he held to be highest and truest. 

She smiled sadly. “ I cannot do anything. I sing 
a little, play a little, read, and think — think till I am 
tired of thinking. But I have no talent for execu- 


116 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


tion. I can oxily dream, and envy those who are 
inside the gates of the Garden of Eden. We live in 
different worlds. Yours is the best.” 

She spoke slowly, but there was an unmistakable 
earnestness in her words. These moods of something 
very like despair because she could do nothing to 
free the thoughts locked in her heart overcame her 
periodically. She erroneously fancied that they were 
unusual, and therefore of value, whereas in reality 
they were merely the fruits of that most common- 
place of all conditions — discontent. 

Perhaps it is only those who have published verses 
that have utterly failed to appeal even to the smallest 
coterie of listeners, who quite realize how very little 
interest individual emotions excite; that is to say, 
unless they are expressed with a rugged strength or 
a richness of metaphor and simile that gives them 
all the vividness of novelty. 

Philippa looked at art, as outsiders always do, as a 
definite achievement, forgetting that her impatience 
would never have brooked the tedious labor by which 
achievement is effected. 

“ Do not envy us or me; pity me,” answered Adri- 
an. “My world is empty of all the beauty which 
surrounds you. It is the desert outside the garden, 
where the thorns and thistles grow plentifully. I 
have to degrade art into a trade to live. I have to 


THE PICTURE. 


m 

stifle ambition, to forget my own desires, my own 
ideals. I wish with my whole soul that by any other 
means I could get a living — the merest, simplest ne- 
cessities. To be an artist starving to feed his genius 
is one thing. To be a second-rate painter, forced to 
toady to dealers for the sake of hisfaniily, is another. 
Forgive my plain speaking. You tempted me to it.” 

Was no one happy? Did no one live a life in any 
sense complete? Philippa asked herself petulantly 
as she replied, “ I think I can sympathize, if I cannot 
understand.” 

The expression in her eyes, the infection in her 
voice, held something that flattered Adrian back to a 
triumphant belief in his own power. He was so 
hungry for appreciation of his more aspiring self as 
distinct from the humdrum producer of “ Little Con- 
valescents,” that he seized with joyful, illogical 
eagerness on the assurance of her faith in him as 
an artist, forgetting that foi* this she had no tan- 
gible guarantee. 

Writers*, musicians, all who create, know how rare 
and how precious is praise given in the right way. 
Not in coarse doses of flattery, but in a discriminat- 
ing appreciation of their aspirations as distinct from 
their work, which comes seldom enough. 

People generally believe their own characters to be 
complex, if not unique. They cry out eloquently 


118 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


that they are misunderstood, and forget to try to 
understand the rest of humanity. Adrian told him- 
self that he loved his wife. But he had for years 
unconsciously put her in a class very apart from his 
own. 

When they went out into the sunny garden, under 
the cedar, he and Philippa slipped back to their old 
positions in a moment. Arthur expressed his satis- 
faction when it was arranged that within two days 
the portrait should be begun. 

Isabel acquiesced abstractedly when Adrian went 
home. Randie was much worse, and Fay too was 
complaining of headache and sore throat. Both 
children passed a restless night, and very early in 
the morning Adrian went to summon the doctor. 

Harold Buchanan was in sole command. Doctor 
Palmer having gone with his family for his annual 
holiday. He found Isabel pale after many sleepless 
hours, but moving about the orderly nursery attend- 
ing to pettish, flushed Fay and quiet, heavy Randie 
with the natural deft aptitude bom in the few wo- 
men who make the world so incomparably smoother 
by their precious gift. 

Buchanan was fond of children, and spoke to them 
gently and kindly; but Fay hid her face in the pil- 
lows, and had almost to be forced to allow him to 
look at her. When he had left the French maid in 


THE PICTURE. 


119 


charge, and followed the young mother into the din- 
ing-room, he shut the door. 

“ I do not want to alarm you needlessly, Mrs. Sarel, 
when I hope it will be quite unnecessary, but there 
is a good deal of scarlatina in the village, and I am 
very much afraid both your children have it. For- 
tunately, they are healthy and it is a favorable time 
of year, so that, with good nursing, I have no doubt 
they will pull through satisfactorily. I will do all I 
can, you may be very certain.” 

“Thank you,” said Isabel quietly. She did not 
manifest fear. She rose instantly and unhesitatingly 
to a troublesome emergency. She hastened to put a 
few necessary questions, and surprised Buchanan by 
her readiness of suggestion and resource. 

Adrian was less reasonable and more apprehensive, 
but the doctor decided immediately that he would be 
worse than useless in a sick-room, and also that the 
studio, from its size and bareness, would be the best 
place for the little patients. 

“Take my advice, Mr. Sarel,” he said decidedly. 
“Get a lodging in the village, and give up your 
studio. You might get quarters, I believe, at Rose 
Cottage, where I am. Then you could go on with 
your painting, instead of being here in quarantine, 
and yet would be close at hand if you were wanted.” 

To Isabel this suggestion was a genuine relief. 


120 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Much as she loved Adrian, she saw in an alarmed 
perspective of anticipation the difficulty there would 
be in attending to his comfort. She knew him well 
enough to be assured that any sacrifice would depress 
him beyond even her powers of passive endurance. 

“You will go, won’t you, Adrian?” she said be- 
seechingly when the doctor had left the house. “ I 
had scarlet fever badly when I was a child. There 
is practically no danger for me, but for you it is dif- 
ferent. You have never had it. For my sake, for 
theirs, you ought to be careful. What should we do 
if you were laid up?” 

“Go to the workhouse, I imagine,” he retorted 
drearily. He rebelled uselessly against the trouble 
that Isabel accepted with such unswerving compo- 
sure and resignation. As usual, she had no leisure 
to be fearful or despairing. 

“ I have told Doctor Buchanan that I am sure we 
can manage without a nurse,” she went on calmly. 
“ It would be very expensive, and Aline is quick and 
clever, and not in the least afraid. She is devoted to 
Fay, and, I am sure, will have more influence with 
her than a stranger. I am very strong, and, you 
know, I was with Mrs. Miles all the time her chil- 
dren had fever.” 

So Adrian easily allowed himself to be persuaded. 
He objected to any appearance of cowardice on his 


THE PICTURE. 


121 


own part, but he had the intense nervous shrinking 
from infectious disease that he had for most things 
that were unsightly or unpleasant. 

In the afternoon he went to Rose Cottage, to find 
the vacant rooms had just been let, and as he came 
away he met Arthur Farrant in his well-known 
chair, drawn by a quiet pony and attended by Man- 
ners. He could not drive in an ordinary caTriage, 
but was fond of these unexciting peregrinations 
that were his only link with outside life. He never 
passed an acquaintance without stopping, and had 
a double reason for doing so now. A chance en- 
counter with Harold Buchanan had filled him with 
a pity for the artist which his pale, distressed face 
augmented. 

“ I am so very sorry to hear you are in such trouble, 
Mr. Sarel,” he said, with a sincerity it was impossi- 
ble to mistake. “ But you must cheer up, for chil- 
dren have to go through these things, and the doctor 
tells me there is every chance of their getting off 
easily. He says you have decided to leave home — 
very wisely, as I think.” 

“Yes, I am looking for lodgings, and not finding 
any.” 

“I wish, instead of doing so, you would be our 
-guest. We have plenty of rooms at your disposal, 
and it would be more convenient for you to paint the 


122 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


portrait without the trouble of going to and fro. We 
are always glad to have people staying with us.” 

This was utterly untrue as regarded Philippa, who 
cordially disliked sustained effort to be companion- 
able, little as she troubled herself to make it. 

Those women — an enormous class — who do not 
read except from a vague sense of duty, enjoy the 
dullest visitor who will keep up a mild trickle of 
trivial conversation while they accomplish quanti- 
ties of useless and often downright ugly fancy-work. 
They conceive themselves thus to be spending their 
time well. But the intellectual-minded who will not 
learn that it is useless to expect congeniality of ideas, 
suffer intensely from the invasion of visitors who 
leave them no silent hours. 

Adrian accepted the cordially given invitation 
with but little feigned and no real hesitation. They 
were all quite right. He would be better out of the 
way. Then there was the saving of expense. He 
hated to view the matter from that standpoint, but 
it would obtrude itself. That it would be an untold 
relief to Isabel not to have to think of his meals he 
did not reflect, but not the least of her trials was her 
husband’s small, fastidious appetite. 

“Then come to-day in time for dinner,” finished 
Arthur, well satisfied. “ Bring all your things, and 
make yourself as comfortable as you can.” 


THE PICTURE. 


123 


So it was decided. The village fly was piled with 
easels and canvases, and Adrian drove up to Al- 
laronde with his favorite palette in his hand. 

The children were no worse, and Isabel stood smil- 
ing bravely at the door. The cottage looked a little 
deserted and dreary when she went back alone, tell- 
ing herself how thankful she ought to be for this 
opportune departure. 

Aline was with the children, and Isabel knew that 
her first duty would be to rearrange the studio as a 
bedroom, with the help of the strong but stupid girl 
who was their only other servant. It looked very 
empty without the great easel, and for a moment 
Isabel’s heart sank. Adrian had kissed her very 
kindly, but she felt that it was no struggle to him to 
leave her. 

She was not worthy of him. He was so gifted, 
she so ignorant. She would do her utmost, oh, her 
utmost, to nurse the children that were his too. That 
link must bind them fast, if the other tie weakened. 
She, who was never demonstrative, leant down and 
kissed the vacant chair where he so often sat smok- 
ing. It might be weeks before he occupied it again, 
weeks before the careless laughter of the children 
sounded from the nursery. She had failed once be- 
fore; now she would succeed. 

She did not allow herself to look too far forward as 


124 


THE POWER OF THE DOQ. 


she moved about, gathering up the papers, books, 
and sketches that must be put aside lest they should 
harbor infection. She knew she was at the begin- 
ning of a trying time, but she had learnt the wise 
lesson of taking short views that saves so much 
misery. 

Before the doctor came again it was all done, and 
the two feverish children were established in their 
new quarters. They slept a good deal at intervals, 
and Isabel, as she sat in the still room, with its sin- 
gle pale light, watching and thinking, had never 
been so solitary before. 

When Adrian had said “Good-by,” without any 
attempt to ask himself for how long he was leaving 
home, he had experienced a transitory sense of re- 
morse. It vanished very soon. It was a long time 
since he had enjoyed any sort of luxury, and, as he 
dressed for dinner in a perfectly appointed bedroom, 
he felt as if he had a respite from the existence that 
was more and more irksome, and as if he had slipped 
back into the place he was born to occupy. 

Like the majority of us, Adrian felt that, in com- 
mon justice, he was entitled to a share of purple and 
fine linen, though he did not theorize as to the valid- 
ity of his claim. He wanted his own niche lined 
with velvet, and if it had been, he would probably 
have troubled himself little enough about other peo- 


THE PICTURE. 


125 


pie ; nay, he would almost have had a vague, satis- 
factory assurance that because he was comfortable 
and satisfied, therefore they must be equally at ease. 

Philippa was glad when she heard of his coming. 
Arthur had not often done anything that had pleased 
her so much. Her introduction to the artist had 
been interesting, and her curiosity to see the other 
pictures of which he had spoken increased. 

When Adrian went into the great drawing-room, 
he liked it quite as well as the one that was to be his 
studio. It had an air of splendid comfort, with its 
flowers, its starry electric lamps with soft yellow silk 
shades, its many books. 

To be able to strew an infinity of tiny tables with 
fresh-cut magazines, newspapers, the latest French 
novel, the last new poet, without counting the cost, 
is by no means the least pleasure of a plentiful in- 
come, but it is one not very frequently indulged in, 
after all. 

Philippa, in a long dress of soft black, welcomed 
her guest cordially. The dinner passed in desultory 
conversation, Arthur, on his couch, waited upon by 
Manners, at one side of the table, giving, as it were, 
the reminder that riches too were vanity When it 
was over, she played the piano softly— chiefly scraps 
of Chopin and Grieg, remembered fragments that 
had appealed to her imagination. 


126 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


The spell was broken by the advent of a melan- 
choly curate with a chess problem, into which the 
invalid threw himself with immediate eagerness. 

‘‘They have taken your easel and canvases into 
the north room, Mr. Sarel,” said Philippa when the 
chess players were in full debate. “Will you fulfil 
your promise now, and show me some of your 
sketches?” 

Isabel had seen to the packing, and had ventured, 
rather trembling at her own audacity, to include 
“Medea” with the two full-sized canvases sketched 
in readiness and the half-finished replica of “The 
Little Convalescent.” To her it was a profoundly 
uninteresting picture, but it might be that Mrs. Par- 
rant, who was not at all like herself, would find it 
attractive. If she would buy it, what a blessing it 
would be ! 

“I have scarcely anything worth looking at,” re- 
plied Adrian, whose courage had revived in this 
bright, congenial atmosphere. 

The electric light searched every corner of the 
half -dismantled room when the}' reached it, and, to 
his astonishment and anger, fell full upon “Medea,” 
standing on the large easel, placed there presumably 
by a footman with a sense of the fitness of things. 
He guessed in a moment why it had been sent, and 
was indignant with Isabel for forcing him to make a 


THE PICTURE. 127 

curious but necessary explanation that would sound 
apochryphal. 

That Philippa saw the striking resemblance to her- 
self was quite evident. She decided that this Adrian 
Sarel had taken an unwarrantable liberty, and re- 
sented it with a sudden flush and a flash from her 
deep eyes. 

“I was not aware,” she began very coolly, ‘‘that 
when you engaged to take my portrait you had 
already done so; that is to say, if you do me the 
honor to consider the girl you have depicted like 
me. I notice you have made her younger than I.” 

“Then you see it too?” exclaimed Adrian un- 
expectedly. “ I never meant to let you see this pic- 
ture, which was — fortunately, as it turns out — re- 
fused by the Hanging Committee. I am not so 
presumptuous or so destitute of taste as you suppose. 
I dare say you will not believe me, but I could bring 
a dozen witnesses to prove that this picture was 
painted months before I ever saw you or came to 
Lettice Close. That it resembles you I cannot deny. 
It shall not annoy you any longer,” and, with a quick 
gesture, he seized a palette knife and cut to pieces 
the labor of many months in as many seconds. 

It had been taken out of its frame after it had been 
sent back, so the work of destruction was fatally 
easy. Adrian had grown to hate it now that he 


128 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


recognized it as a failure. He breathed more freely 
when it was ruined. 

Philippa was almost too astonished to remonstrate. 
“Who was your model?” she asked brusquely, with 
an abounding curiosity, a vexation that another wo- 
man should be so like herself. 

“There comes in the strange part of it,” said 
Adrian, quite himself again after his brief outburst. 
“ I had none. I painted the figure in the usual man- 
ner, but the face was purely my own fancy.” 

She believed him implicitly. He spoke with an 
undeniable truthfulness, but it was none the less 
mysterious. 

“ I am so sorry my hasty words made your deeds 
so destructive,” she began gently. “I have made 
you destroy the work of months. It is not possible 
for me to compensate in any way for the mischief I 
have done so unwittingly. The remembrance of to- 
night will haunt me as a Very miserable one.” 

Then Adrian felt the decisive moment had come. 
“ There is another curious coincidence to add to the 
list,” he said slowly. “Yesterday I read Rossetti 
and dreamt a dream of ‘Sister Helen.’ Yesterday 
you read the poem also. I want to paint it as it is 
told. I want the world to feel the magic of the white 
witch, pale and beautiful, kneeling in the light of 
the fire that is burning a man’s soul. I could paint 


THE PICTURE. 


129 


it — I believe I could paint it well — if you would let 
me do as greater artists have done, and use the face 
that best realizes the vision of the ideal before me. 
I am sometimes nearly desperate when I think that 
the years are fleeting past and nothing is done. I 
must succeed before I die. I cannot debase myself 
for ever. ” 

His fire communicated itself to her, and she spoke 
impulsively, warmly, thrillingly. “ Paint me as Sis- 
ter Helen, if I am worthy of being the centre of a 
great picture. I shall be proud of my own face 
when I hear that it is your masterpiece.” 

He might have been a Eaphael to her fervent im- 
agination, almost to his own, considering the access 
of self-belief in his power that came to him. The 
real facts were quite dwarfed and overmastered by 

all this embroidery of hope and sanguine fancy. 

9 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. 


TCiajRS. MILLINGTON never solved the mystery 
of Beryl’s shoes, though whenever she was 
short of conversation she brought up the 
subject, preferring as she did the most threadbare 
topic to any interval of silence. 

Beryl kept the piece of paper guiltily, but lacked 
both courage and opportunity for giving it back. 
She did not meet Harold Buchanan half so often as 
her stepmother had hoped. There had been several 
cases of scarlet fever in Northbent before those of the 
little Sarels, and the doctor absented himself with 
private thanksgiving from the usual tennis parties, 
on the plea of possible infection. Beryl thought 
about him more than she was aware, and liked to 
hear the stories current in the village of his kindness 
to the old men and women to whom she dutifully 
ministered, and who enjoyed her visits much more 
than Mrs. Millington’s. 

Betty kept her own counsel and her promise. It 

was an effort, but the delight of reflecting that she 
130 


THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. 


131 


knew something of which Mrs. Millington was igno- 
rant sustained her, though she was disappointed that 
nothing had come of her discovery. 

Children always expect that every small event will 
have immediate and apparent results. They only 
learn gradually that the great game of consequences 
is apt to be played very slowly. 

Betty was always the newsmonger of the family, and 
this morning, when she ought to have been doing her 
German exercise, she was nowhere to be found. She 
took lessons with some other girls from a daily gover- 
ness, who had her trials at times with her lively pupil. 

Beryl was sitting in the little summer-house, with 
its boxes of mignonette and trailing honeysuckles, 
industriously knitting while Bab read aloud in a 
melancholy voice a dismal story, in words of one 
syllable, of a lost dog. It was a depressing narra- 
tive, but it is by no means easy for a writer to be 
cheerful when his genius is fettered by these irritat- 
ing limitations. 

They made a pretty flower-framed picture. The 
wind stirred the child’s golden curls unheeded by 
Bab, but the perfume on its wings brought sweet, 
intangible dreams to Beryl — those thoughts of youth 
which go out into the future that seems so illimitable 
then, but hurries on so closely in the track of the fly- 
ing years. 


132 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Bab frankly hated her lessons, and was fidgeting 
to be out in the hayfields; but Beryl could always 
manage her very well. 

The lesson was cut short by Mrs. Millington, who 
came bustling down tbe garden. 

“Beryl, where is Betty?” she began, telling Bab, 
to her delight, that she might go. 

“Doing her German, I suppose,” replied Beryl 
tranquilly. 

“ Now, Beryl, you are really most tiresome. Alice 
and Monty went to Miss Price more than an hour 
ago, and Betty has not touched her German, although 
all her books are open in the schoolroom. I should 
have thought, at your age, you might have been ca- 
pable of looking after her. But no; nothing is ever 
done in this house unless I do it myself. Mrs. Bunt- 
ing said, only the other day, when I was telling her 
the days of all the different parish meetings, ‘How 
you can do it all is what I never can make out.’ ” 

Truly, when given out in Mrs. Millington’s voluble 
staccato, the list did sound endless, and she was par- 
ticularly fond of detailing the number and variety of 
her occupations, quite ignoring the fact that much of 
the drudgery connected with them was done by 
Beryl. 

Certain busy persons are so aggravating in that 
exemplary apportionment of their time concerning 


THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. 


133 


which their friends never hear the last word, that the 
veriest idler appears excusable, because less annoying. 

“Really,” she continued hurriedly, “I shall have 
to see if I can manage to send Betty to school. Her 
idleness, untidiness, and pertness are beyond every- 
thing. And I am not sure whether that Fraulein, 
as she calls herself, is at all an improving teacher for 
her. In my time no one learnt German, and I am 
sure Betty is no example of any good coming of it. 
It fills her head with all sorts of improper ideas. 
Look at this, and then tell me if I was not perfectly 
right when I said that three and sixpence a week 
extra was too much.” 

Fraulein Wehren, like all Germans, regarded her 
Schiller as only one degree less sacred than her Bible. 
She was not a wise woman, and so it came to pass 
that Betty, who might only devour “ Ivanhoe” by 
stealth, and who was not allowed to touch a modern 
novel, was revelling in “The Robbers.” 

Beryl remembered enough of her own studies to 
recognize with amusement that the love-sick Amalia’s 
song had been selected as a suitable exercise in trans- 
lation : 


“ His embraces, raging enchantment, 
Mighty, fiery, with heart beating to heart, 
Mouths enchained. Night before us. 

Our spirits raised heavenward. ” 


134 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Betty’s rendering of the impassioned original was 
not clingingly exact, and was certainly a trifle in- 
coherent. 

Mrs. Millington read this choice extract from her 
very blotted exercise book with withering empha- 
sis, and Beryl burst into an uncontrollable fit of 
laughter. 

“Be quiet. Beryl,” said her stepmother tartly. 
“ Here am I already worried to death, and this is all 
the sympathy you give me. Here is Betty rushing 
about the village, no one knows where. There are 
four cases of scarlatina in the place, and now I hear 
those tiresome little Sarels have both got it.” 

“Oh, poor little things,” said Beryl, all sympathy 
in a moment. 

“Yes, and what is more, I am told they are fright- 
fully poor, so that makes it all the more provoking. 
It would really be quite a mercy if that lame boy 
should be taken, for he is never likely to be of any 
good in the world.” 

Mrs. Millington made this remark without at all 
realizing what it meant. Happily, Providence does 
not often choose to rid our neighbors of their respon- 
sibilities just because we see so plainly the desir- 
ability of such a riddance. 

Beiyl did not put her indignation into words. She 
knew from experience that it was quite useless, so 


THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. 


135 


she merely listened in a silence that was full of in- 
ward disgust. 

“ As to Mr. Sarel, he has gone to stay at Allaronde, 
if you please, leaving his wife to do the nursing. I 
always had a prejudice against painters and writers, 
and all people of that sort, and I think even you will 
admit I was right this time. Then, too, it is most 
unheard of for a young man to be staying in the 
house with such a good-looking woman as Mrs. Far- 
rant. But there, of course, you know nothing of the 
consequences of such things, and I should be the last 
person in the world to tell you of them.” 

Mrs. Millington always spoke out her thoughts, if 
the ideas that trickled through such feeble brains are 
entitled to so dignified a name. She expressed a 
great horror of gossip, but she could never refrain 
from communicating any scrap of news she might 
hear to any adjacent listener. She very often made 
Beryl’s cheeks burn, as they did in this instance. 

To simply state a fact in the old blunt fashion that 
shocks our fastidious taste when we come across it in 
a play or novel, is not a common failing nowadays. 
But it is doubtful whether the suggestive hint is not 
a more dangerous instrument, after all. Mrs. Mil- 
lington often began a story and broke it off short 
mysteriously. The pity of it was that she ever be- 
gan it at all. 


136 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


A loud voice became audible, to Beryl’s infinite 
relief. 

“Mamma,” cried Betty, in much excitement, 
“there’s been a mad dog in the village — oh, perfectly 
mad. It was a strange dog, and it looked dreadful. 
It rushed along with its tongue hanging out of its 
mouth, and everybody was so scared. The men all 
ran into their houses and shut the doors, but I waited 
in Miss Pimley’s little garden to see what would 
happen. It went on quite straight, not seeming to 
see anything. Somebody must have gone to Rose 
Cottage, for Doctor Buchanan had got a gun, and 
he fired from his window and hit it, and it rolled 
over in a minute. He did shoot well. And then he 
came out and took away the dead dog.” 

“What a mercy no one was bitten,” said Beryl, 
who had grown rather white. “ I suppose it really 
was quite dead?” 

“Of course it was,” said Mrs. Millington with de- 
cision. “ Would any sane person have touched it 
otherwise. Now, Betty, you have had a narrow 
escape, and I hope it will be a lesson to you. Go in 
directly and do your German. Beryl, you had better 
help her, or she will never have it ready in time.” 

“Come along, you dear old duffer,” said Betty 
affectionately, when her stepmother had gone in- 
doors. “ I know ten times as much German as you 


THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. 


137 


ever did, but if you will look up the words in the 
dictionary, I can tell you more about the mad dog as 
I go along. I do wonder mamma never said that if 
I had been bitten it would have been a judgment on 
me for going out instead of sticking indoors. Be- 
sides, I’ve something to say to you very important 
about you know what,” and she wagged her head 
knowingly. 

Mrs. Millington was safely in the kitchen, over- 
seeing the concoction of a weak soup for invalid 
parishioners. She was not a greedy woman. She 
cared very little what she ate and drank, and re- 
garded this as a virtue of no mean order, when it 
was no virtue at all, but an accident, owing to an 
imperfect sense of taste. Unluckily, she had no 
power to discriminate between good and bad quality, 
none of that dainty nicety that demands perfection 
in the simplest meal, and makes breakfast an idyl 
and dinner the satisfjdng sequence of careful reflec- 
tion. 

She was not illiberal, but the vicarage puddings 
and the vicarage soups were too indifferent to escape 
scathing criticism. “ It do my heart good to see Miss 
Beryl when I be bad,” an old carpenter had been 
heard to say, “but I’d as soon make my dinner off 
my own glue-pot as that jelly of Mrs. Millington’s 
she brought with her for my quinsy throat.” 


138 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


The schoolroom was shabbily furnished and not at 
all orderly, but it was pleasant with big jars of wild 
flowers and morning sunlight. Betty began to scrib- 
ble her exercise rapidly. 

“I shan’t bother much about seeing if my prepo- 
sitions govern the right things; there’s no time. I 
like German, but I fail to see why on earth the prep- 
ositions can’t behave reasonably. Berry, how quiet 
you are. Don’t you want to hear my news?” 

“Of course I do, Betty. And you’re quite sure 
that dog is dead ?” 

“As a door-nail,” said Betty, frowning over her 
mental declension of a refractory adjective. “ I like 
Dr. Buchanan, and when he was picking up the dog 
I went and told him I thought him very brave. He 
laughed, and said, ‘Poor beast, I hate to kill any- 
thing, and especially a dog. I should like to send 
them all to this wonderful Pasteur if it were possible.’ 
Then he told me a little about Pasteur. It was so 
interesting. And then he said, ‘I went to a lecture 
about hydrophobia the other day, and, like an idiot, 
lost some notes I had made upon it. I alwaj’s 
thought I must have let the paper fall between the 
station and the vicarage. ’ Then I forgot all about 
the shoes, and said, ‘I picked it up one night when I 
was out sugaring with Bevan. I knew it was yours 
by the writing.’ And then I remembered, and he 


THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. 


139 


must have remembered too, for he looked very hot 
and uncomfortable. I felt so stupid. At last he 
went on, and asked why, if I knew whose it was, I 
had never given it him. So I was obliged to say. 
And he was awfully nice, and yet I could see he was 
in rather a state of mind too. ‘I must ask Miss 
Beryl to forgive me,’ he said, ‘and I thank both of 
you for having kept my little secret.’ And, Beryl, 
he said he had noticed how pretty your feet were, 
and so ” 

“Betty, do finish your German, and don’t talk 
such rubbish. I tell you what I shall do. I shall 
post that wretched piece of paper.” 

Beryl felt very guilty when, the same afternoon, 
she dropped a letter into the pillar-box. It contained 
a short note in addition that had cost her much mis- 
giving and had been re-written two or three times : 

“ Dear Dr. Buchanan, — I must thank you now 
for the pretty shoes, as I did not like to do so before. 
I am sorry you wanted your notes. 

“Yours sincerely, 

“Beryl Millington.” 

It came to Buchanan next morning as he sat alone 
at breakfast, and he read it with great amusement. 

“What a shy little thing she is!” he thought; 
“very different from Betty. Yet I like Betty too. 


140 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


It is really a pity they have such a terrible step- 
mother. The mere sight of Mrs. Millington will be 
enough to keep any man from falling in love with 
any of them.” 

He had immense confidence in his own level- 
headedness, but he did not drop the little note into 
the waste-paper basket immediately, as was his cus- 
tom, but threw it into a drawer. 

He had enough to occupy his mind just now. 
That the dog he had managed to shoot, greatly to 
his own surprise, was mad, he had no doubt after a 
careful examination. That it had, luckily, bitten 
no one in Northbent was certain, but whether it had 
encountered any strolling animal before it came into 
the village was quite another matter. There were so 
many scattered houses and so many dogs. There lay 
the danger that he hoped would not strike any one 
but himself. There had been one or two recent cases 
of hydrophobia, and Buchanan, like every one else 
of any intelligence, was keenly interested in the Pas- 
teur discoveries, then just being noised abroad. 

He had taken a good degree, and had plenty of 
professional ambition. Sheer want of money to buy 
a partnership or set up independently made him per- 
force compelled to content himself with his rather 
humble position, but he had a sanguine disposition 
and a well-grounded belief in his own power, and if 


THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. 


141 


a man cannot succeed with these, nothing will help 
him. 

He walked down to Lettice Close thinking of all 
this, but was quickly recalled to the immediate pres- 
ent by the news that Randie had had a bad night 
and that his temperature was very high. Fay was 
cross and intractable, but had slept fairly well. 

He noticed how keen the mother’s anxiety was, 
and did his best to cheer her. He had seen plenty of 
anxious parents before, but never one so reserved and 
so practical. “ The fever must run its course. The 
weather is favorable, the child healthy, despite his 
lameness,” he repeated. 

His kindly sympathy was very welcome, and 
while he was lingering to give some final direc- 
tions, a basket containing a few bantam’s eggs was 
brought in. 

“Miss Millington has been to inquire, and she 
thought perhaps the children might like these,” was 
the message. 

Isabel was very much pleased. Cut off as she was 
from friendly intercourse, and almost a stranger in 
the neighborhood, with a reserved nature’s inability 
to make itself readily understood, it gladdened her to 
have this simple gift. The sweetest chord on the 
harp of life is kindliness, and it may be touched 
melodiously by very small fingers. 


142 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


** That was Miss Millington at the ball the other 
night, I suppose?” she asked, as the young doctor 
moved toward the door. “ She looked so bright and 
happy, as if she had never known a care or a trouble.” 

“Appearances are a little deceitful, for Miss Mil- 
lington has a stepmother,” said Buchanan with a 
smile. 

Isabel went back to her patients happier. She 
was a born match-maker, like all women except the 
objectionable few who view every engaged man as 
an admirer the less for themselves. She found herself 
reflecting that Harold Buchanan and pretty Beryl 
would look well together, and laughed at herself for 
her fancies. But they did her good, and let her 
drift away for a moment from the anxieties that were 
besetting her so closely. To have one feeble, suffer- 
ing child is bad enough ; but to have two to nurse at 
once needs a very special temper and ability. 

Randie was very ill; there was no doubt of it. 
The beautiful little face lay flushed upon the white 
pillow ; the great blue eyes were heavy and dull. If 
she should lose him! The anguish of the thought 
was enough to make her shrink from it without ask- 
ing herself to face the prospect that did not seem 
remote. 

Fay needed all her patience, all her tenderness, in 
her absolute rebellion against sickness. A hundred 


THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE, 


143 


times she protested she was quite well, that she 
wanted to go out and play in the garden, and, above all, 
to go to her father. She would not eat, and talked 
incessantly, now in French and now in English. Or 
she would try to sing, and then break off impotently, 
saying that her throat hurt her. 

A week wore away, and Isabel felt as if she had 
never known any other existence than this. Adrian 
wrote her notes and sent daily inquiries, but she 
would not see him, and the fact that he made no 
great effort to break her resolution strengthened it. 
Fay’s perpetual longing for her father distressed her 
greatly. She still brooded over her own fancied 
cowardice in letting Philippa rescue her from the 
canal, and it seemed now as if all her efforts to win 
the heart of the child who, although her own, was 
like an alien to her, were in vain. 

It was her punishment, the young mother reflected, 
forgetting that it had always been the same. Fay 
had been from the first her father’s daughter, Randie 
her own little son, her idol. She accused herself of 
having thought too much of the one who was so lov- 
ing, and who now, in his pain and fever, could still 
smile at her approach and take the medicines from 
her hand so uncomplainingly. But her heart yearned 
toward Fay as it never had before. 

Poor Isabel, bereft of her husband, with that sting- 


144 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


ing sense she tried so bravely to utterly stifle that the 
separation was no such trial to him, clung to her 
children. It did not matter to Randie that her dress 
was worn and shabby, that she was careworn and old 
so long before her time. She was “mother,” and 
those two syllables contained to him all the best of 
his little world. 

One day a trifling incident broke the monotony of 
the hours. She received a kindly letter from some 
relations of her father’s whom she only knew by 
name as living in India. The old lady wrote that 
her husband had made enough money to retire com- 
fortably, and that they had taken a house at East- 
bourne. They had heard of Isabel’s marriage, and, 
having no children of their own, longed to make her 
acquaintance. Would she and her husband and lit- 
tle ones pay them a long visit whenever it was con- 
venient to them to come? 

Isabel replied very gratefully. She was so glad to 
think there were those who had loved her dear father 
sufiiciently to remember his orphan daughter. She 
told Mrs. Boyd all her present troubles, and there 
was something in the letter that made the old coffee 
planter surreptitiously go out and despatch a quantity 
of expensive toys to amuse the little invalids, while 
his wife shed tears. 

Who can wonder that the eyes of plain, solitary 


THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. 


145 


women fill when they see the clinging touch of little 
arms round the necks of their married friends, when 
they watch the rosy mouths and peach-blossom 
cheeks held up so eagerly for kisses? The husband’s 
first passion may not change into that tenderer affec- 
tion, born of respectful knowledge, that is the rare 
but exquisite crown of quiet happiness; but the little 
sons are true lovers and in joy over the little daugh- 
ters’ beauty many a mother sweetly buries her own 
youthful vanity. 

It was settled that when the children were better 
they should go to Eastbourne, and Isabel amused 
herself and them by stories of what they should do 
by the sea when they were well again. It was the 
one bright spot in a very dreary period, and to think 
of obtaining without any money difficulties the 
change of air that would be necessary by-and-by 
was a great comfort. 

Isabel’s was one of those rare natures that are in- 
tensely grateful. There was something pathetic in 
the fact that kindness always surprised her, some- 
thing noble in the truth that she could always accept 
it with a thankful humility. Adrian passed his life 
in angry, protesting wonder why other men had so 
much more than he ; Isabel in unquestioning submis- 
sion to any misfortune or sorrow, and ready gladness 

for the least ray of sunlight. 

10 


146 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Harold Buchanan learnt to like and honor her 
very quickly. A doctor sees the genuine side of 
human nature too clearly to be very often mistaken. 
He has rare opportunities of judging character, and 
must at times be amused at the false estimates given 
by those who only see the outside view of their 
acquaintance. 

He was very busy, and somewhat perturbed by his 
own private fears. The mad dog episode had been 
witnessed by only a very few people, and as the prin- 
cipal local gossips were not among them, it was but 
little discussed and soon forgotten. His own prompt- 
itude in shooting the animal, which very likely was 
all right, after all,” was somewhat condemned. It 
had not bitten any one, which was a proof that he 
had been premature. 

Mrs. Millington rather assented to this theory. A 
vague, uncomfortable idea that the young doctor 
occasionally amused himself at her expense had taken 
possession of her. He had refused to come to a pic- 
nic she and Mrs. Bunting were organizing together, 
and showed so little inclination to further her schemes 
that she was beginning to think that, after all. Beryl 
had better marry the chess-playing curate. When 
the long evenings came, he should teach her the 
game, she decided. It was fortunate it was so 
difficult. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


“thy pleasurable aspect.” 


HE week that was so long to Isabel passed 
like a happy hour to her husband, in spite 
of his half-imaginary anxiety for his chil- 
dren. For he was anxious when he thought about 
them which, truth to tell, was not particularly often. 
When Fay had been rescued from the canal, he had 
felt as if she were all the world to him, but the emo- 
tion had been fugitive. Yet Adrian was not indiffer- 
ent or unloving ; only it was so long since he had been 
quite free to work, not only without hindrance, but 
in a sunny atmosphere of admiring encouragement, 
that he was immersed in the satisfying present. 

His was the true artist temperament. He had never 
cared for anything else as he cared for art. He had 
married Isabel because her beauty appealed to him, 
and because he had seen that she loved him. He 
was very fond of Fay. He liked her grace, her 
quaint, old-fashioned talk, her French nature. But 

he could do without her, he could do without any 
147 


148 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


one, while he was in the first flush of a new inspira- 
tion. 

At Allaronde there were no petty annoyances to 
check the soaring flight of fancy and drag him down 
to commonplace. He heard nothing of those house- 
hold matters which he so cordially disliked. Instead 
of the pitiful efforts of an incompetent cook, there 
were dainty dishes and choice wines that helped to 
stimulate his excited and hopeful energy much more 
than he knew. Instead of noise and bustle, there 
was the luxurious calm of the wealthy, perfectly 
ordered house. 

For the first two or three days he had salved his 
conscience by toiling at The Little Convalescent.” 
He had got up betimes in the bright mornings, and 
painted away diligently, if not very conscientiously. 
For always before him was the vision of a great pic- 
ture, a picture he could work at lovingly and sign 
proudly. 

Arthur Farrant greatly admired and liked “The 
Little Convalescent,” and was warm in his praises 
when it was finished. He was immensely impressed 
with Adrian’s skill, and not a little moved when he 
heard that the model was a cripple and the painter’s 
own son. 

Between Philippa and Adrian there was a tacit 
intimacy that had a curious charm, which he felt 


“TilF PLEASURABLE ASPECT. » 149 

with a special intensity when she looked at the paint- 
ing in silence. He did not want her to profess to 
commend things of this kind when she alone knew 
what he could do, what he meant to do in the near 
future. 

The sittings for her portrait took place in the 
morning, and, very contrary to their expectation, all 
three enjoyed them. Philippa daily filled the great 
china bowls with roses or masses of honeysuckle and 
foxglove. The French windows were always wide 
open, for the enjoyment of the June days that were 
so cloudless, and Arthur’s couch was drawn near 
them. 

He had never known his wife so beautiful or so 
charming. She was happy, and the happiness over- 
flowed in bright, witty talk. She made a good sitter. 
She was perfectly content to be idle, and quite free 
from any restlessness. 

Adrian had genuine pleasure in learning by heart 
the face that haunted him. The portrait should be 
as good as he could make it, though, after all, it was 
to him but a study for “ Sister Helen.” He was in- 
defatigable, and in the afternoons, when Philippa 
was driving or walking beside her husband’s chair, 
he stayed indoors making sketch after sketch with 
ever-increasing satisfaction. 

The curate came to lunch when Sarel had been a 


150 


THE POWER OF THE DOQ. 


week at AUaronde, and afterward settled down to 
chess with Arthur under the cedar, while he and 
Philippa strolled about, followed by Kismet. 

The dog was dull and languid, responding very 
indifferently to the caresses of his mistress. He did 
not like Adrian, and manifested his antipathy by an 
occasional low growl if he attempted any overtures 
of friendship. Philippa was very fond of animals, 
and treated them with a tenderness she never con- 
descended to show to men and women, or even chil- 
dren. 

She talked to her companion now as if the ac- 
quaintance of days had been a friendship of years. 

The ways of falling in love are legion, but there is 
none more subtle or more seductive than the sudden 
apparition, amidst uncongenial surroundings, of a 
perfectly congenial companion. 

Adrian was too much occupied with his new idea 
to be conscious that he owed it in any way to Phil- 
ippa Farrant. He accepted her society as part of the 
pleasure of being at AUaronde, without inquiry as to 
the importance it relatively occupied. 

Already, as they loitered about in the checkered 
shade, she was thinking how powerfuUy she influ- 
enced him, how readily he fell in with her sugges- 
tions and theories, how curiously their tastes harmo- 
nized. She had begim — and very prematurely — to 


^THY PLEASURABLE ASPECT." 151 

rejoice that she at last had a friend who understood 
her. Mistaken phrase, for, except as the visionary 
central figure of “Sister Helen,” Sarel thought very 
little about her. 

If on the night of the ball he had half yielded to 
a momentary disloyalty of thought to his wife, it had 
passed utterly. Isabel had never done more than 
enchain his fancy, but he honored her, and no other 
woman had ever, or seemed, indeed, ever likely to 
come between them. His unspoken conviction that 
marriage was something of a failure in his case had 
hardened him against temptation of that kind. For 
beauty he had a great enthusiasm, but he viewed it, 
as usual, rather as part of his stock-in-trade than as 
invested with any of the glamour with which most 
men endow it. 

But it was a long time since he had encountered 
any one to whom he could descant on art as he did 
to Philippa. She was a fascinating listener, and, 
after all, this is the role in which a woman is most 
enticing in masculine estimation. The man who 
does not enjoy talking about himself and his pursuits 
is so rare a creature that American beauties are 
wisely careful to enter Society with the latest Wall 
Street quotations on their pretty lips. 

“I have made some headway to-day, Mrs. Far- 
rant. I could not sleep, and I was up very early. I 


152 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


have done a rough charcoal sketch of ‘Sister Helen,’ 
full-sized, and if you care to come and look at it, I 
should be very glad to have your opinion as to the 
pose.” 

Arthur had been told nothing of the forthcoming 
picture. They had not discussed the subject at all ; 
Philippa — because she liked to fancy the artist con- 
fided in her, and in her alone; Adrian — because he 
had a profound contempt for the very undeveloped 
art sense of his host. He never cared even to impress 
those whom he thought ignorant. 

They went indoors to the room that was now 
spoken of as the studio, and which looked, indeed, 
very like the studio of Adrian’s boyish imagination, 
and very different from his bare surroundings at 
Lettice Close. 

The canvas was turned to the wall, but Adrian 
took it up and placed it on a large easel. Philippa 
looked at it long and attentively. The simple char- 
coal outline held something “ Medea” had never held 
after the most careful painting, although there was 
an analogy in the accessories of the two pictures. 

A dull fire smoked and smouldered. Something 
hung suspended above it — the waxen image, nearly 
melted. Beside it knelt a »woman, tall and stately, 
with loose, disordered hair and bare arms. Her 
beautiful, clear-cut face was evidently meant to 


THY PLEASURABLE ASPECT. 


153 


catch the full reflection of the flame. Its expression 
was one of concentrated purpose; no remorse, only- 
hatred, in the deep-set eyes. 

Philippa’s eager imagination imbued the outline 
with life and a full glory of intense coloring. “ If 
Rossetti were alive, he would be satisfied,” she said, 
after a long silence. I know it is only the begin- 
ning, but you have got the soul of it there ; the rest 
cannot be impossible. Seriously, Mr. Sarel, I believe 
it may be a great picture.” 

“ The worst of it is,” said Adrian, trying not to 
show his satisfaction at her words, “ people do not 
read poetry nowadays. They will not understand 
my meaning.” 

“And if they do not, what does it matter?” she 
interrupted. “Besides, that is surely an exploded 
fallacy. I grant you, poets make no fortunes, but 
yet, when a new voice has something new to tell us 
nobly, there are always some listeners. Finish 
‘Sister Helen’ for the elect few, for whom nowadays 
so very little is done, and be satisfied that perhaps 
you may make a very few more learn to read a poem 
because you have painted its heroine.” 

Adrian was silent. He noticed a slight defect in 
the drawing of one of the arms, and began to correct 
it with an intentness that made Philippa a little en- 
vious. 


154 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


She would make him listen to her, she thought, 
and, taking up the vellum -bound Rossetti, she began 
to read the poem aloud in her rich, musical voice. 
She opened in a low, quiet tone, but after a verse or 
two she threw dramatic expression into every line. 

Adrian forgot his drawing, and turned toward 
her, feeling an admiration that had a touch of reluc- 
tance in it. He wronged her by a passing wonder 
whether her own past held any secret that enabled 
her so to identify herself with such a tragedy of love, 
revenge, and hatred. It did not. She had often 
played with edged tools, but lacked sufficient induce- 
ment to be tempted to use them. “‘Lost, lost, all 
lost between earth and heaven,’” and she let the book 
fall suddenly. 

“You are a wonderful reader,” said Adrian with 
a coldness that repelled her for an instant and then 
vexed her. “ You made me feel the horror of the 
thing as I never have before.” 

“Do you believe a woman could avenge herself 
like that?” asked Philippa curiously, “or do you 
think she would have yielded to such urgent pray- 
ers? Your Sister Helen looks as if her resolution 
were of iron.” 

“ The only woman I can be said to know intimately 
would certainly have yielded, but I cannot even pic- 
ture her in such a position,” replied Adrian. “As 


^THY PLEASURABLE ASPECT” 155 

to the rest, my ignorance ought to prevent my an- 
swering such a question ; yet I have a theory that 
women can be very cruel, and according to that 
theory I mean to paint. A good woman is the sec- 
ond best thing in life, a bad one quite the worst.” 

“ And the best thing?” Philippa thought she knew 
the answer as she put this question, but she found 
her tongue strangely unwilling to pronounce the 
word “love.” 

It did not come from Adrian, who was touching 
his drawing here and there with anxious elaboration. 
“Art,” he replied, with a certainty that sounded as 
if his whole creed were contained in the three letters, 
as, in fact, it was, in spite of a good deal that would 
have disillusioned a man less visionary. 

“ That is what always makes me feel such a pa- 
riah, and makes me wonder for what purpose I can 
have been put into the world,” Philippa exclaimed 
with a genuine ring in her voice that told that she 
meant what she said, and was not merely posing. 
Her longing to do something was never so potent or 
so painful as when she saw another person attain- 
ing, or even approaching, the goal of an ambition 
that to her seemed noble, whilst she herself played 
the tame part of onlooker. 

Adrian was not a flatterer, or even a coiner of 
pretty speeches, but he was too grateful to allow 


156 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


such an opportunity of being commonly gracious to 
pass, especially as he could be truthful as well. “ You 
make a mistake in supposing that there is nothing of 
any worth except achievement. It is such women as 
you who inspire men to achieve.” 

He made the fatal mistake of believing that be- 
cause he merely regarded her as the superb lay figure 
that was to make his masterpiece, she would under- 
stand and accept this modest position. 

She did not, but took it as an expression of a hom- 
age to her intellectual qualities, the thing she most 
craved, for which it was far from being intended. 
Plenty of men had made love to her, but not one of 
them had interested her, perhaps because they suc- 
cumbed too quickly to the physical charm she could 
so easily exert. This man was made of different 
stuff, she determined, and was unlikely to be swayed 
entirely by appearances, yet he too recognized in her 
those rare attributes which he could not refuse to ac- 
knowledge and admire. 

There was a pause, broken only by the scratching 
of the charcoal against the rough canvas. To Adrian 
it was occupied with an effort to satisfy himself as 
to the disposition of a fold of drapery ; to Philippa 
it was irradiated with a dazzling vista of prospective 
hours of happiness. 

The conversation was ended, to her vexation, by 


THY PLEASURABLE ASPECT. 


157 


the sound of Harold Buchanan’s well-known voice 
on the lawn. 

“ If you do not mind, Mrs. Farrant, I will go and 
see the doctor. I am always glad to hear the news,” 
said Adrian. 

He went out under the cedar, sulkily followed by 
Kismet, who had been moving about the room. 

“ I am glad to say your children are going on as 
well as we can reasonably expect,” was Buchanan’s 
greeting. “ My chief fear is lest the nursing should 
be too much for Mrs. Sarel.” 

“ Oh, my wife is very strong.” Adrian was think- 
ing what color “ Sister Helen’s” draperies had better 
be, and was balancing tones and depths too anxious- 
ly to be really attentive. 

“Selfish idiot!” commented Buchanan mentally. 
He had a very poor opinion of Adrian, which this 
remark strengthened into positive dislike. 

“Strong or not, in my opinion she is overdoing 
herself,” he said coldly. He too wronged Sarel by 
the thought that in the presence of such a woman as 
Mrs. Arthur Farrant it might be possible to be for- 
getful of nearer claims. 

One of the worst penalties of being an artist is 
that outsiders cannot view life from an artist’s stand- 
point, and quite neglect to try, so that the unfortu- 
nate artist is usually very harshly judged. Every 


158 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


fault and every peculiarity are laid at the door of his 
ability to paint or write, and, with really inferior 
people, that he does so at all is the subject of a faint 
wonder, not unmixed altogether with pity that a man 
who might be succeeding — or failing — in the City 
should so waste his time. 

Buchanan was too clever and clear-sighted to esti- 
mate art in this preposterous fashion, but he did feel 
indignant that this tall, handsome dreamer should 
show so little consideration for the patient wife into 
whose eyes the mere mention of his name brought a 
quick brightness. 

“Your dog seems rather out of sorts, Philippa," 
said Arthur, struck by the restless manner in which 
Kismet was running about, and perceiving that his 
favorite doctor and his guest did not get on together 
particularly well. 

“ Let me look at him,” said Buchanan, whose mind 
was very full of the subject on which all his reading 
for the past week had turned. He had noticed noth- 
ing unusual during his short visit, and was surprised 
at the thrill of excitement he felt. Just for one in- 
stant the scientific inquirer in him was uppermost; 
the next, he felt almost ashamed of his own anxiety 
to see and judge for himself, remembering what that 
seeing and that knowing might imply. 

But the dog shrank away from him, as it had 


THY PLEASURABLE ASPECT. 


159 


always done from strangers, and whilst he was try- 
ing to attract it a servant came out with a peremp- 
tory summons to the other end of Northbent, which 
he had no choice but to obey immediately. 

He walked away with his mind much occupied. 
Of course, he might be rushing to ridiculously hasty 
conclusions, but there was undoubtedly something 
curious about the look of the dog. Mrs. Farrant was 
so attached to it that even if he dared tell her of his 
misgivings she would probably only laugh at them. 

His best chance would be to make another effort to 
examine the animal, and then to frankly tell his 
friend what had happened. He would have a hard 
task to doom poor Kismet, but if he could assure 
himself of even the slightest danger, it would be his 
duty to act very promptly and decisively. 

He would stroll up to Allaronde after dinner, and 
carefully prosecute his inquiries. This, however, 
proved impossible, for he had to attend a drunken 
carter who had fallen from a hayrick. He was fear- 
fully injured, and Buchanan had to watch beside him 
for hours. 

It was an exquisite evening, and Philippa rather 
suddenly decided to go for a drive, whilst Manners 
followed her husband’s chair in his favorite pere- 
grination through the village. 

Adrian had fully intended to walk down to Lettice 


160 


THE POWER OF THE DOO. 


Close and see his wife in the garden, but ‘‘Sister 
Helen” seemed to beckon to him. He had never felt 
such a satisfaction in any picture. Even to his ex- 
acting eye, the charcoal study appeared fairly good. 
If he were alone for the next few hours he could 
begin the picture itself. 

Everything faded out as he stood before the white, 
empty surface. He was alone with the dreams that 
so surpassed all reality. Isabel, the children, the 
pitiful, grinding remembrance of poverty, all these 
were no more. Hope and he stood in the shadow 
world, peopled with vague creations. He knew now 
where and why he had failed with “Medea.” He 
exulted in the self-confidence that is so alien to 
vanity. 

A very keen observer, scrutinizing his second 
painted outline, might have detected a slight inferi- 
ority to the bold grace of the first sketch. To him- 
self he seemed to be improving his original with 
touches that felt inspired. No gladness of utmost 
completion ever compares with this rapture of antici- 
pation. He did not notice that Kismet was slinking 
about the room. His whole being was concentrated 
in an intensity of effort. If he tried his utmost, 
surely he might force open the thrice-locked gates 
that lead to the temple of fame. 

A few brushes had fallen to the ground, and the 


“ray PLEASURABLE ASPECT.'' 161 

dog presently seized one of them and began worrying 
it. It was a favorite brush Adrian perceived, when 
the sound made him turn his liead. He tried to in- 
duce Kismet to put it down, but the dog paid no at-* 
tention to him. He was impatient and hasty, and, 
without reflecting that it was a somewhat foolhardy 
proceeding, he tried to take it away. 

With a low growl Kismet sprang at his arm and 
bit him slightly, scarcely breaking the skin, just 
above the wrist he had bared for greater freedom of 
action. Adrian was startled, but not much alarmed, 
especially as the dog loosed his hold in a moment, 
and ran away through the open window. 

“Nasty, surly brute,” he commented, picking up 
the cause of contention. “ Luckily, the bite is a mere 
nothing, and I can go on drawing.” 

But he soon found this impossible. The interrup- 
tion had banished his ideas and inspirations, and he 
took up a book and lighted a cigarette. He did not 
like to tell Philippa what had occurred, for she had 
two or three times accused him of teasing the dog. 
When she returned. Kismet was nowhere to be 
found, and her anxiety was great lest he should have 
been lost. 

Adrian was less happy than he had hitherto been 
that evening. A rather tardy compunction for his 
wife’s solitude and trouble depressed him. He 
11 


162 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


would go to the doctor early next day, he decided, 
and if he considered it wiser to get a nurse, he 
would put his pride in his pocket, and ask Arthur to 
advance him a small sum upon the portrait. He 
thought a little wistfully of the children, and, for the 
first time, he missed Fay. 

Philippa studied his face covertly as he sat reading 
while she played the piano. It was sadder than she 
had yet seen it, but he looked very handsome under 
the flattering subdued light. Such a man, such an 
artist, should have been free, she decided. The dull 
household cares were not for him. 

Arthur lay upon his couch with a not especially 
high-class comic paper in his hand and an amused 
smile on his lips. She looked at him with con- 
tempt. The old liking for what was trivial and 
commonplace — nay, vulgar — that had always irri- 
tated her, struck her afresh with an added force. 

Then, for the first time, she dreamt a dream that 
made her expression strangely exquisite, though nei- 
ther of the two men observed it. 

Supposing she, with her wealth and her beauty, 
had been in Isabel’s place, married to a husband 
whom she could admire and reverence as able to v\'in 
the homage of the world. Life might have been 
something worth living then, worth enjoying. She 
could have been all in all to a husband she could 


“TITF PLEASURABLE ASPECT.'^ 163 

have loved. That transient sense of satisfaction in 
a prospective career of self-renunciation had soon 
been forgotten. The gulf that separated her from 
Arthur could never be bridged; their natures were 
too diverse. 

And Adrian Sarel? Did he, too, feel all the mis- 
ery of untoward circumstances, uncongenial sur- 
roundings? He seldom spoke of his wife. Was 
that little, dull woman in any sense a companion for 
the man who could paint Sister Helen?” Children ! 
What were children in a home so poor as theirs must 
be? Again and again, as she saw the dark head re- 
flected in a mirror opposite her, did she wonder 
whether such thoughts as her own ever passed 
through his brain. 

When a woman admits tacitly that here is a man 
she might have loved, then the costly first step has 
been taken. 


CHAPTER IX. 


A DOUBLE EVENT. 



HE next day was heavy and thundery, but 
Harold Buchanan, as he sat at breakfast in 
his small but comfortable lodgings, did ample 
justice to the meal, although he had left the death- 
bed of the injured carter long after sunrise. He was 
thoroughly healthy, and frequent glances at a med- 
ical journal had no kind of effect upon his appetite, 
although to supersensitive tastes it might have ap- 
peared a rather ghastly form of literature. 

He was a great favorite with his landlady, and 
when her small daughter brought up a relay of hot 
toast, she volubly gave him the latest piece of North- 
bent news, which made him look rather graver than 
it seemed to warrant. 

‘‘Please, sir, they sent down this morning first 
thing to know if Mrs. Farrant’s dog was ’ere. It’s 
lost, and they are in a reg’lar way about it up at Al- 
laronde. They thought it might ’ave followed you.” 

So Kismet had run away from home without any 

cause. Of course, it was highly improbable that he 
164 


A DOUBLE EVENT. 


165 


had been bitten by the strange dog; but, on the other 
hand, he was often in the road outside Allaronde, 
and if such a catastrophe had occurred, the sooner 
the poor animal was found and shot, the better. The 
dog had certainly looked dull and out of sorts for sev- 
eral days past. It was, of course, more than possible 
that he was suffering from over-feeding or some other 
minor evil. 

He was thinking it over, and trying to remem- 
ber and connect dates and occurrences, when “Mr. 
Sarel” was abruptly announced by an untidy servant 
who evidently strongly disapproved of such early 
visitors. 

Adrian had not forgotten his resolution about the 
nurse, and had determined to go to Buchanan and to 
settle the matter before he started on his rounds. 
He had not slept well, and looked rather pale. 

“Have a cup of coffee,” said the young doctor hos- 
pitably. “ I know you cannot have breakfasted yet, 
and you look rather fagged. ” 

Adrian had not expected such a warm ’svelcome, 
but it paved the way better for w^hat he had to say, 
and he accepted the offer gratefully. 

“You will forgive my invading you at such an 
hour,” he began, “ but the fact is that you frightened 
me a little about my wife, and I wanted to say that 
if a nurse is necessary, a nurse must be procured. I 


166 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


am a poor man, much poorer even than people think,” 
and Adrian smiled rather bitterly, “otherwise my 
wife would not be doing as she has done.” 

Buchanan was somewhat melted by this frank 
avowal, and liked Sarel better than he had ever done 
previously. 

“Of course, a nurse is a good thing,” he replied; 
“but perhaps I spoke too hastily yesterday, and we 
may manage to do without her. Besides, I am 
afraid Mrs. Sarel would resent an intruder with en- 
ergy. I have seen many devoted mothers, but I 
never before saw one who combined so much tact 
and capacity with her devotion. No; I will make a 
bargain with you to tell you at once if I think Mrs. 
Sarel should be relieved, and in the mean time I 
will warn her that if she wears herself out unneces- 
sarily, we shall have to take the law into our 
own hands. Your French maid is a good, clever 
girl, and could do much more if Mrs. Sarel would 
allow it.” 

He poured out the coffee as he spoke, but a less 
self-controlled man would probably have let the cup 
fall, for as Adrian stretched out his hand across the 
table to take it, he saw a mark upon his wrist that 
his quick eye knew for what it was. 

“ Hurt your wrist? ” he questioned, with well- 
assumed carelessness. 


A DOUBLE EVENT. 


167 


A mere trifle,” said Adrian, with an accent of re- 
lief in his voice due to gratitude for the staving off 
of that detestable prospect of discussing money mat- 
ters with Arthur Farrant. “ When I was painting 
yesterday, that big dog Kismet got hold of one of my 
best brushes. We had a difference of opinion, and 
he snapped at me, I suppose for objecting to let him 
devour it. As you see, he scarcely broke the skin,” 
and he pulled up his coat a little way. 

“ Take my advice, and have it just touched with 
caustic,” said Buchanan, wondering if his assump- 
tion of indifference was quite successful. ‘‘Some- 
times in hot weather a little wound will inflame and 
be unpleasant.” 

He was so fearful of frightening Sarel that he for- 
got how utterly immersed he was in his own doings, 
how little likely to have attached any importance to 
the shooting of a dog in Northbent which scarcely 
any one except himself and Betty believed to have 
been mad. Besides, plenty of dogs bit when they 
were perfectly sane, and he kept reminding himself 
that he had no sort of definite proof that Kismet had 
been bitten. 

But Sarel, though he had no idea where the doc- 
tor’s thoughts were wandering, took quick alarm on 
other grounds. 

“ Thank you for the suggestion, especially if you 


168 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


can carry it out at once. It is my right wrist, and if 
it did inflame, my painting might be stopped.” 

“Oh, no fear of its being so bad as that. How- 
ever, I’ll cauterize it here now, just to be on the safe 
side.” 

The little operation was quickly and dexterously 
performed, and, after thanking the young doctor, 
Adrian added to his good-by, “Do you mind not 
mentioning this either to my wife, who might be 
afraid of my being hurt, or to Mrs. Farrant? She 
always said I teased the dog, and might fancy I 
chastised him for snapping and tempted him to run 
away.” 

As the gate clicked and Sarel walked out, Bu- 
chanan looked after him gravely. Pasteur’s very 
name was almost unknown then, except to a few ad- 
vanced scientists, so that Buchanan did not think, as 
most people think now, of a journey to Paris as the 
first expedient. Besides, his case was at present ut- 
terly unproved. He was too practical and too pru- 
dent to let his mind dwell on any horrible surmises. 

There was but one thing he could do, and he 
promptly did it. He was a good shot, and he put a 
revolver in his pocket. It was within possibility that 
he might encounter Kismet, and have some chance of 
looking at him. To shoot another dog on suspicion 
was not a thing he wished to do, but he must not hes- 


A DOUBLE EVENT. 


169 


itate if he had even the faintest cause for doubt. 
When he had come to Northbent, he had resigned 
himself to a humdrum routine practice; but, after 
all, he decided, excitement was not altogether absent. 
It never will be so long as disease and death last. 

There was a heavy thunderstorm in the middle of 
the day — “Just the usual Saturday weather,” as 
Betty Millington remarked gloomily. She hated to 
spend a moment indoors, and it was hard that, when 
she had got through her week’s work so virtuously 
that she positively had no lessons in arrears, a scheme 
of going out caterpillar hunting for the boys should 
be so frustrated. 

Beryl sat darning in the schoolroom with perfect 
philosophy, trying to keep the children quiet while 
her father wrote his sermon. 

Mrs. Millington was bustling about the hall, nois- 
ily interviewing the payers of club money for the 
week, and her quick, remonstrant voice was quite 
audible. Whether her husband’s selection of “ The 
Blessings of Peace” as his subject had anything to 
do with that voice is an open question. 

Betty yawned capaciously twice. “Oh, dear me. 
Berry, how I wish something would happen. I am 
simply sick of going on in the dismal old humdrum 
fashion. I wish we had lived in the Middle Ages, 
when there always seemed to be tournaments, or in 


170 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


those old-fashioned summers when it was fine all day 
long. When I was a small child I thought we should 
do all manner of grand things when we were grown 
up. You are grown up, but, as far as I can see, it 
hasn’t made the faintest difference.” 

Beryl sighed. She could not enter into explana- 
tions with Betty, but she knew that there was a dif- 
ference, and that it was painful. Mrs. Bunting’s 
ball had been less of an era in her life than the morn- 
ing that succeeded it, and she had been wiser and a 
little sadder since. 

“ I thought you would have liked to write at your 
story,” she said mildly, as she threaded her needle. 

“I shall never get on with it again,” said Betty 
very tragically, “for I’ve burnt ‘Etheldreda; or. The 
Wraith’s Revenge,’ burnt every chapter of it.” 

“My dear Betty, I should quite as soon have 
thought of your burning yourself.” 

“ This morning, when you were doing the church 
vases, mamma caught me. I had a splendid idea, 
and in the middle of my old sums — ugh ! how I hate 
sums! — just did a page or two. The wicked duke 
was going to carry off Etheldreda at the ball, and 
the family ghost met him, and held up his skeleton 
arm and said ‘Beware!’ You have no idea how 
creepy it was— a nice, damp old passage, plenty of 
bats and crawly newts. Well, mamma came behind 


A DOUBLE EVENT. 


171 


me, and read a bit over my shoulder. I call it a 
most dishonorable thing for anybody to do. And 
she read aloud — and oh, how I did jump! — “ ‘Das- 
tard, yield up my bride, and return to your boon 
companions.’ ” You know, Cyril de Vere, the hero, 
had come up. They always do in books. Mamma 
said, ‘What stuff is that, Elizabeth?’ and when I 
hear the word ‘Elizabeth,’ I know I’m in for it, ‘Is 
this another specimen of those very improper Ger- 
man plays I mean to speak to your father about?’ I 
couldn’t help it; I simply roared with laughter at the 
idea of ‘Etheldreda’ being by Schiller. Mamma was 
furious. When I told her I was writing a novel she 
said ‘Give it to me. I insist upon reading it.’ I 
couldn’t, so I tore it all to bits and burnt it. Per- 
haps in years to come, when I am a great authoress, 
I shall write that plot again. It was such a good 
one. I mean to be celebrated some day. Beryl. I 
should like to have enough money to buy Bevan a 
Large Copper for the collection. Why, I do believe 
it‘s clearing. Oh, Berry, if it does, let us go for a 
long walk, and then I shan’t bother about poor, dear 
Etheldreda.” 

It did clear, and about five o’clock, after a grum- 
bling protest from Mrs. Millington that they were 
forever wasting their time out-of-doors, the two sis- 
ters went out into the clear, fresh air. They were 


172 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


good walkers, and as the fields were very wet, they 
took their way along one of the pleasant, winding 
lanes, where the thick dust was laid and the foxgloves 
were standing stately in the hedgerows. This led to 
a broad expanse of common, where the tall bracken 
ferns made a gold-green fairy forest, which by-and- 
by the heather would empurple. 

Betty’s spirits soon rose, and in scrambling for in- 
accessible honeysuckle she utterly forgot the wicked 
duke. Beryl was quieter, but just as happy in her 
way, with that delicious sense of youth and well- 
being we only analyze and long after when it has 
gone forever. 

She was prettier in her pink cotton and her wide 
straw hat than in her ball dress, Harold Buchanan 
decided as, returning from his rounds, he approached 
the sisters too absorbed in stretching their arms up- 
ward for the pale, prickly roses to notice his coming ; 
but prettiest when she blushed and shook hands 
rather shyly. 

“Let me help you. I am taller. I have got a 
knife, too,” he said, not without a vague sense that 
he was a little unwise to linger. “Your hand is 
bleeding already.” 

“ Oh, never mind. It is a thorn, I think ; but it is 
nothing. I can easily get it out when I go home.” 

“ Let me do it now. I always carry needles.” 


A DOUBLE EVENT. 


173 


Beryl caught herself wondering who had made the 
neat little case he took out of his pocket, and which 
had, in fact, been an offering from a middle-aged 
nurse. 

She held up her plump, brown hand like a child, 
and as Buchanan took it he noticed it was very small 
and soft. He was absurdly conscious of Betty’s 
calm scrutiny, but in reality she was looking in quite 
another direction with her long-sighted gray eyes. 

“ I see a dog tearing along at such a pace,” she re- 
marked. “ Why, it is Mrs. Farrant’s Kismet, and it 
looks so strange. It will be close to us in a minute.” 

With one swift glance, Buchanan could have 
staked his life the animal was mad. No one who 
has once seen a mad dog is ever mistaken. 

“ Don’t be frightened. I must shoot this dog as I 
did the other.” 

There was no time for reply, but Beryl turned as 
pale as death. 

The poor creature rushed straight past them, turn- 
ing neither to left nor right, and, as Buchanan fired, 
fell dead in a moment. 

Betty had not changed color, but stood her ground 
resolutely, whilst Beryl hid her face in her hands. 
It was a solemn moment for all three, but when Bu- 
chanan moved towards the dead dog. Beryl caught 
him by the arm. 


174 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


“ Don’t touch it. There might be danger for you,” 
she exclaimed, with a fear for him overmastering 
every other sentiment. “ Are you sure, quite sure, 
the poor thing is dead, and do you think he was 
really mad? I shall never forget his eyes.” 

“Yes he was mad,” said Buchanan, leaning over 
the creature with a genuine pity. “ But you were so 
brave. Beryl, when he was rushing along. Be more 
courageous now that the danger is over.” He never 
noticed he had called her by her Christian name. 

But Beryl was not brave, and had only restrained 
herself by a very great effort. She trembled and 
turned aside. 

There was no one at hand, and the road was a 
lonely one, so that even the report of the revolver had 
probably passed unnoticed. 

Buchanan scarcely observed the girls, for it was 
necessary for him to resolve upon action. The dog 
that had bitten Adrian Sarel was mad. It was es- 
sential that he should never know this horrible fact. 
The slight wound had been immediately cauterized. 
There was probably no danger at all, unless it should 
be created by alarm, acting on a sensitive, highly 
wrought nature. The thing must be kept an invio- 
late secret, but was that possible when it was shared 
by two girls? 

A glance at Betty, perfectly cool and collected, and 


A DOUBLE EVENT. 


175 


trying to reassure her sister, decided him. She had 
kept the story of the satin shoes to herself. She 
would be silent in this matter. And as to Beryl, she 
would do what he told her ; of that he was positive, 
though he did not ask himself why. 

“ I am going to beg you young ladies to do me a 
favor, and a difficult one,” he began in his ordinary 
voice. “ I want to bury this poor dog here upon the 
common, and never to let any person know either 
that he is dead or that I shot him Mrs. Farrant be- 
lieves he is lost, but I have reason, a very weighty 
reason, for wishing no one to hear the real facts. It 
is important, and I should fear to trust most people, 
but not you.” 

Beryl was silent, but Betty, with her quicker 
intelligence and her ready imagination, rushed to a 
conclusion that was the true one. 

“Take this to dig with,” she began, holding out a 
small trowel she had brought with her to get ferns 
for her garden. “We both promise, and no Milling- 
ton ever breaks a promise. I can guess the rest. 
That dog has bitten some one. But you need not be 
afraid of us. We are father’s daughters, not mam- 
ma’s.” 

“Thank you, Betty.” said Buchanan, grasping the 
dirty hand held out so frankly, and finding a sort of 
relief in having a sharer of even part of his secret. 


176 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


“You are wonderfully quick. Kismet has bitten 
some one, but very slightly, and the wound was cau- 
terized directly. That person ought never to know 
the dog was mad.” 

He took up the beautiful dead creature, and walked 
on to the common, where the gravel soil would make 
it particularly easy to bury it. Bett.y followed him, 
but as he laid it on the sweet-scented, thymy turf, 
they heard a little startled cry. It was from Beryl, 
who had fainted for the first time in her life, and was 
lying by the grassy road side unconscious. 

They were both beside her in a moment, and in an- 
other she opened her startled blue eyes, to find Betty 
supporting her head and Buchanan leaning over her, 
sprinkling a little water from an adjacent spring on 
her face. 

“Oh, how silly I am. What was it? Where am 
I?” she began when consciousness returned. “Ah, 
I remember it all now. It is you who were bitten 
by that terrible dog, and you may die.” 

She did not know what her incoherent words 
meant, but her listener did. His heart beat with a 
sense that something strangely natural had hap- 
pened, and there was genuine feeling in his voice 
when he answered, “Thank God, it was not I.” 

He could not trust himself to speak just then. An 
awed inner consciousness assured him that it was 


A DOUBLE EVENT. 


177 


himself who was the central figure in this sweet 
young girl’s pure dreams and fancies. He felt 
ashamed to know what was unknown to her, and for 
this first time he wished that circumstance did not so 
emphatically debar any thought of marriage, except 
as a mere money bargain. 

It was characteristic of his nature that Beryl’s 
weakness touched him more than the courage of her 
younger sister aroused his admiration. 

As soon as Beryl had revived Betty helped him to 
bury Kismet, with an experience born of melancholy 
and frequent interments in the pets’ cemetery of the 
rectory garden. 

Beryl was almost well by the time they had fin- 
ished. She had no idea what she had revealed, or 
why her relief and thanksgiving should be so fer- 
vent. She was not curious to know who had been 
bitten. First love is about the most selfish thing on 
earth, and directly she had heard Harold Buchanan 
was unscathed, even her usual ready sympathy with 
any unfortunate person was utterly forgotten. 

He walked part of the way back with them, but, 
rather to the relief of both, made an excuse for stop- 
ping at a cottage before they entered the village. He 
had no desire to face Mrs. Millington at any time, 
but less so than ever just now. She would come be- 
fore his imagination in the guise of mother-in-law — 
12 


178 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


not for himself, of course; that was hopelessly im- 
possible and unlikely. But she was certainly a most 
tedious woman, and even in his grave and anxious 
thoughts of the events of this eventful day she still 
obtruded herself. 

Beryl was quite herself again as they walked 
through the rosy glow of the sunset. She only 
wanted to be quiet, and for once Betty fell in very 
aptly with her mood. 

That active brain was too busy even for words, but 
as they neared the rectory she said with determina- 
tion, ‘‘‘Etheldreda’ was mere bosh. I am glad I 
burnt her. By-and-by I will write a real story 
about all this. Not for years, you know. I shall 
make Doctor Buchanan the hero — much better than 
just a fancy person like Cyril de Vere.” 

Beryl was inattentive, but Betty finished in her 
own thoughts, “ And you shall be my heroine, only 
I won’t tell you that. But it must be a pink satin, 
not a pink cotton.” 


CHAPTER X. 


SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 

HEN a week elapsed without any sign that 
poor Kismet’s fate was known or guessed, 
Harold Buchanan breathed more freely. It 
was as well that he was very busy, otherwise even 
his wholesome nature might have brooded morbidly 
over the case of Adrian Sarel. He saw him daily, 
and noticed with relief that he looked well and was 
rather more animated than usual. 

Isabel had taken immediate alarm at the idea of a 
nurse, and had promised to spare herself — the first 
promise she had ever broken in her life. 

The weather was hot, and the fever ran high with 
Randie. The kind-hearted young doctor was very 
anxious to spare the mother one sacrifice, but at last 
he felt he must urge it. He put his hand gently on 
the head of the unconscious child. “ I am afraid we 
ought to cut off these curls,” he said with evident 
reluctance. 

Isabel turned to him with an imploring glance. 

Just for a moment it seemed as if she could not con- 
179 


180 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


sent; the next, she answered him, with only a slight 
tremor in her voice, “ If you think it will be best ; 
only will you hold him up while I do it myself. No 
one else must touch him.” 

She took up a pair of scissors at once, after telling 
Randie, who only smiled faintly. There was some- 
thing so far-away in that smile that to poor Isabel it 
brought a chilling fear that to the child of her heart 
nothing earthly mattered any longer. That there 
was danger for him, though Buchanan would 
scarcely admit it, she knew with every fibre of her 
being. Yet she clipped off the lovely golden curls 
that had been her joy and pride, and did not falter 
until her work was quite accomplished. 

When the small shorn head was laid back upon 
the pillow, she looked up to the doctor with urgency 
of appeal. “You will not make me burn them?” 

“No, no,” said Buchanan hastily. “There are 
plenty of ways of making it quite safe for you to keep 
the pretty things. But they will soon grow again.” 

“If God spares him to me.” 

There was no rebellion against the divine decree, 
no impotent lamentation. “Thy will be done” was 
and had always been Isabel’s religion. She clung to 
it now with all the tenacity of her steadfast soul. 
She had no time to deplore her darling’s disfigure- 
ment. 


SUNSHINE AND SHADOW, 


181 


A much harder duty lay before her — to induce Fay 
to have her heavy hair shortened. It was essential, 
but the childish coquette sobbed and cried pitifully. 
She had never lost consciousness, and indeed, had 
she been quieter and more tractable, would have 
suffered very little from the light attack of fever. 
Her chief discomfort was due to the effects of the 
bursts of angry tears, which were, however, much 
less frequent than at first. 

She now hid her face in the pillow and refused to 
let Buchanan touch her. ‘‘I hate you, I hate you,” 
she sobbed out. “ You want to take away my hair. 
Papa wouldn’t let you if he were here. He says I 
am his little picture-girl. Nobody will love me if I 
am ugly. Nobody ever does love ugly children.” 

“Pity ’tis ’tis true,” thought Buchanan, almost 
losing patience, and wondering that Isabel was not 
irritated. He did not know that her longing to win 
the heart of this other wayward child was the chief 
emotion of her life just at present. 

The poor girl found she dared not think too often 
or too much of Adrian. There were thoughts con- 
nected with him that unnerved her for her work of 
nurse. But to win little, wild Fay to love her truly 
was a goal worth long waiting and longer effort. In 
her husband’s absence the children were all in all. 
They at least must cling to her, or how could she go on? 


182 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


“Leave her to me, doctor, please,” she said with 
gentle authority. “I will persuade her. We must 
not let her disturb Kandie.” 

The little fellow had dropped asleep, and his face 
looked pitifully small without the clustering curls. 

“I shall be out late to night, Mrs. Sarel,” said Bu- 
chanan, not wishing to alarm her, “and I think I 
had better look in again.” 

He gave her a few directions, and went away very 
sorrowful. Sickness and pain still touched him, as 
they always touch noble natures, in spite of famili- 
arity, and the fear that Randie might die was up- 
permost in his thoughts. 

Isabel did not immediately keep her promise with 
regard to Fay’s hair, for, worn out by her struggles, 
the child fell asleep. 

When Randie awoke, late in the evening, for the 
first time there was no recognition in his eyes for the 
mother who bent over him. He was awake, but 
there was no look of consciousness, and again his 
temperature had risen alarmingly. 

“Aline, you must go for the doctor,” said Isabel in 
terror, for she had sent the other servant on a neces- 
sary errand. 

So she was quite alone with the two children. 
Fay was sleeping quietly. She could only watch and 
wait. She had no messenger to send to Adrian, fc • 


SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 183 

whom in this supreme moment all her heart cried 
out. 

Low on the wall hung a print of that Murillo Ma- 
donna with the Child that smiles down divinely from 
the walls of the Utuzzi. In that smile there is an 
answer to the doubter. Faith recognizes in a sudden 
rush of ecstasy that there was indeed One “who 
for us men and our salvation came down from 
heaven.” 

Isabel flung herself upon her knees before it. She 
wanted a definite symbol. She wanted to feel that 
her impassioned prayers were indeed addressed, not 
to a remote and awful Deity, but to One who can 
pity as well as aid. We want neither God nor man 
alone in these supreme moments; only that union, 
that dual nature, that combines the omniscience of 
the Deity with the tender human compassion that no 
other form of religion has ever quite realized. 

“ Save him, save him, or, if it may not be, give me 
strength and patience.” 

Isabel did not know that she had spoken that 
prayer aloud, and that she had a listener. Fay 
roused herself to hear it, and to see her mother’s 
piteous face raised to the picture she vaguely associ- 
ated with Sundays. She was not a child who had 
been strongly impressed with religion, as are many 
even younger than she. Privately she feared God 


184 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


because they said He could see her when she was 
naughty, and that was so often. She was also very 
much afraid of death. 

She was fond of Randie because he let her tyran- 
nize over him. The idea that he might die had never 
occurred to her. It now flashed across her as a dread 
possibility, and with it came a sudden rush of love 
for her mother. Papa could not have cared much 
about them, after all. He had gone away and 

‘‘Oh, poor mamma; oh, dear mamma, come to 
Fay.” 

The shrill childish voice came like an answer to 
the prayer itself. With her little daughter’s arms 
locked round her neck, her tears mingling with her 
own, Isabel felt a ray of sunlight had pierced the 
darkness of that dark hour. 

“Darling mamma, don’t cry. You shall cut off 
all my hair, and I will be such a good girl. Randie 
won’t die; he can’t.” 

“ Hush, darling ; let us ask God together to let him 
stay with us.” 

Harold Buchanan paused reverently at the door 
rather than interrupt that prayer. It so rebuked the 
private doubts and scientific questionings that, after 
all, only troubled him very occasionally. He was not 
introspective. He was too much occupied with other 
people to imagine himself all-important. People who 


SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 


185 


are so perpetually busy with their own souls are very 
apt not to accomplish much definite work. 

Isabel rose from her knees as he entered, but with- 
out any sort of embarrassment. Prayer was too nat- 
ural a habit with her. She was rapt into another 
world, and her only present interest in this one cen- 
tred in Randie’s little bed. 

Anxious hours followed, hours of which each mo- 
ment seemed a day to Isabel. Randie talked inces- 
santly and incoherently, and always in his delirium 
the name of “ mother” was uppermost. Fay watched 
also, clasping her mother’s hand, with a new gravity 
in the great, dark eyes that closed as the pink dawn 
flushed through the curtainless window. 

A belated cuckoo called to the other birds to waken 
and enjoy the summer, and at last, just as the sun 
rose, the breathing of the child became quieter ; the 
voice first sank to a whisper, and then was silent. 
He lay so still that for a dreadful instant Isabel 
thought the end had come. 

“There will be a crisis when he wakes,” said Bu- 
chanan. “ While there is life there is hope.” 

And before the birds had finished their matins 
the faint hope was justified, and Randie awoke with 
his old sweet smile that sought the happy mother 
bending over him. The crisis had passed, and with 
extreme care he might recover. 


186 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Buchanan did not leave the house until the little 
patient slept again. Before he did so, he made Isa- 
bel promise to rest awhile after taking some food 
while Aline occupied her place. 

Isabel obeyed him by drinking a cup of tea, but 
she could not rest. She was far too excited and too re- 
lieved. So she went out into the garden, where the 
white dew still glittered on the lawn, and the great 
clumps of queen lilies filled all the air with incense. 

“Joy cometh in the morning.” It was a glad 
world, and soon, very soon, her husband would be 
with her to share her thanksgiving. Buchanan had 
promised to go to Allaronde with the news, but Isa- 
bel forgot that Adrian would not have known of the 
danger until it was over. 

Those terrible hours when Handle’s life hung in 
the balance separated to-day from yesterday by a 
great gulf. She herself bore visible traces of the 
agony of the night watch. Such hours age more 
swiftly than happy, easy years, and in the golden 
sunshine she looked white and worn. Unselfish 
though she was, she fell into the universal error of 
expecting her husband to be in entire sympathy with 
her own mood. Years of experience ought to have 
taught her how very seldom he fell in with it, but 
just now she was too full of gratitude and joy to 
have any room in her heart for other emotions. 


SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 


187 


He did not, after all, come until later than she ex- 
pected, having, for the first time, accompanied Phi- 
lippa in her daily early ride. It was not the first 
time she had asked him to do so, for she knew that 
she never looked to such advantage as when on horse- 
back. But, for an undefined reason, he had made 
his work the pretext for refusal. But now that in- 
cubus, “The Little Convalescent,” had been de- 
spatched to the dealer, and “ Sister Helen” could not 
elude his gi’asp because she was fixed on canvas, he 
had no valid excuse. 

So they had gone out into the delicious freshness, 
and he had immediately perceived how fit a central 
figure she would make for an illustration to Brown- 
ing’s “Last Ride Together.” She would have re- 
joiced if she could have guessed the thoughts that 
made him grave and abstracted. 

Arthur Far rant, with his customary good-nature, 
had begged Adrian to make use of his horses; yet, 
since his marriage, he had not often felt sadder than 
when, from his window, he watched his handsome 
guest and his beautiful wife ride away under the 
branching trees. He had no thought of jealousy. 
He could trust her absolutely. But the memory of 
the sheer physical rapture he was never to feel again 
stung him with an aching sense of irreparable loss. 

As it happened, Buchanan met them when they 


188 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


were returning, so, as they passed Lettice Close, Isa- 
bel, walking in the garden, just had a glimpse of 
Philippa, radiant and animated with the exercise 
and air. Philippa knew better than to interrupt a 
tete-a-tete between husband and wife, but as she went 
home she exulted in the contrast between herself and 
this weary-looking, white-faced woman, in her shab- 
by dress. 

Adrian was not altogether a large-minded man, 
and at this moment he felt the old vexation with Isa- 
bel for appearing at a disadvantage. But she was 
unconscious of his thought as she ran to meet 
him. 

He put his arms round her and kissed her, and 
they sat down on a garden seat together. He was 
not very much moved by her history of all that had 
happened. She had no brilliant conversational pow- 
ers, and no ability to tell a story otherwise than very 
simply. 

If Adrian could have seen her praying in her de- 
spair while her child lay dying, as she thought, he 
would have been so struck by the poignant pathos of 
the situation that he would have been responsive to 
enthusiasm. As it was, he expressed his pleasure in 
the fact that Randie was out of danger with a certain 
calmness that chilled her a little. 

“ And what have you been doing?” she ended. 


SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 


189 


“Oh, painting, as usual. I have sent off the 
‘Convalescent,’ so there will be funds for the 
doctor.” 

He could not tell her anything about “Sister 
Helen.” She had never heard of the poem if she had 
heard of Rossetti, he decided. 

“ And Mr. and Mrs. Farrant, are they nice to you, 
and do they make you comfortable? I am always so 
afraid you will not be looked after.” 

The contrast between the stately luxury of AUar- 
onde and the shabbiness of Lettice Close that he so 
disliked, made his answer sound indifferent. “ Oh, 
yes, they are pleasant people, but I shall be glad to 
get back.” It was not true, but just for the moment 
he fancied it was, and she believed it. 

“ All being well, it may not be very long before I 
am able to take the children to Eastbourne, but it 
would be very drear}^ for you to be here alone. I 
was hoping that Mrs. Farrant’s portrait might have 
kept you there till I came back.” 

“ A little solitude is no bad thing for a painter. 
Belle, and I have had nearly enough society for the 
present. I feel rather fagged. I think I want to be 
quiet, and less on the strain to be amusing. Poor 
Farrant is not a lively companion.” 

Isabel looked anxious. “Don’t work too hard, 
dearest. If our darlings are well soon, I shall not 


190 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


stay away an hour longer than is necessary. I want 
you so.” 

He felt the tenderness of her appeal, but he could 
only respond to it by a caress that was merely given 
because it seemed the easiest answer. She was 
wearisome to him, because he could not talk to her 
of the more exciting interests that filled his inner 
life. 

But he sent loving messages to both children, and 
a pretty fairy tale in pictures for Fay, which kept 
her radiant. She had borne the cutting of her hair 
with heroism, and was much comforted by Aline’s 
assurance that she would be tres gentille with her 
short, dark curls. 

Kandie recovered with the wonderful, elastic ra- 
pidity seen only in the very young. A week later 
Isabel could scarcely believe that the danger had been 
so recent. Fay was a source of delight to her. All 
her capricious affection was now centred on her 
mother. She no longer asked for “papa,” but was 
full of eager anticipation of the joys of Eastbourne, 
the sea, the beach, and the shells. 

The Millingtons had sent constant inquiries for the 
little patients, and more than once Beryl had met 
Harold Buchanan at the door. Those were red-let- 
ter days for her, but as she never mentioned these 
meetings, even Betty was not hopeful of any sequel 


SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 


191 


to the exciting episode that had permanently de- 
throned Cyril de Yere from his post of hero. 

The secret between them made a wonderful differ- 
ence, and gradually Buchanan came to feel a chill of 
disappointment if he did not catch a glimpse of the 
little figure that was so often to be seen among the 
cottages. 

Mrs. Millington was not, as she often said, one 
who ever shirked an unpleasant duty. Indeed, she 
constantly put things before herself in the light of 
duties, for the pleasure of doing them, that would 
have been better left undone. 

She had taken a dislike to Adrian Sarel, and 
vented it in a free indulgence of speculations why he 
remained so long at Allaronde. Her husband an- 
noyed her by his obstinate lack of interest in conjec- 
tures that made Beryl silently indignant. After dis- 
cussing the matter with one or two intimates, she 
came to a decision that “ some one” ought to speak, 
not to Mrs. Farrant, of whom she was secretly not a 
little in awe, but to that stupid Mrs. Sarel. 

Who so fit a mentor as the wife of the vicar of the 
parish? She wrote a gracious note to Isabel, re- 
gretting that danger of infection debarred them from 
meeting at the vicarage, but saying that she would 
enjoy a chat with her in the garden if she could spare 
half an hour. Isabel, of course, read nothing between 


192 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


the lines, and was not sorry to have an opportunity 
of expressing her gratitude for Beryl’s inquiries. 

Mrs. Millington made her appearance next day in 
a shot-silk visiting dress that rustled aggressively, 
and the two sat down on the seat where Isabel had 
last been with her husband. 

“ I am glad to hear your children are recovering, ” 
she began, “ but it is necessary I should tell you that 
this visit is not a visit of inquiry for them. You are 
young still.” 

Isabel smiled a little. She did not feel so. 

“And quite a stranger here, I believe.” 

Isabel assented rather wonderingly. 

“ You have no friend to advise you in any difficul- 
ties, so I determined to come to you.” 

Mrs. Millington said this very meaningly, but her 
listener only looked more and more puzzled and 
waited to hear further. 

“ It is a painful subject, and I am quite at a loss 
how to refer to it,” continued Mrs. Millington, shak- 
ing her head until the beads on her mantle rattled. 
“But oh, my dear Mrs. Sarel, even in Northbent 
there are evil tongues, and they are bus3^” 

“ Scarcely with my concerns, I think, Mrs. Mil- 
lington,” said Isabel gently. 

“ Yes, with yours, or rather those of your husband. 
Surely it is a strange thing that he should be away 


SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 


193 


from home all this time, and Mrs. Farrant is so very 
handsome that ” 

‘‘ Stop !” There was stem anger in the single word 
that scared even Mrs. Millington for a moment. Isa- 
be 1 sprang up and stood before her with a face of 
horrified amazement and contempt that was unex- 
pected enough. 

“I let you speak because you are older than I,” 
she exclaimed, but I will not hear another word. 
Do you suppose that I cannot trust my husband, the 
father of my children, to be away a few weeks with- 
out insulting the most honorable man that ever lived 
with such bare suspicions as those? Mrs. Farrant 
saved my little daughter’s life, and is this how you 
wish me to repay her — ^by listening to the silly scan- 
dals of those who have no object in their empty lives 
except to make others miserable by their slanders?” 

Really, Mrs. Sarel, you show a temper you should 
learn to control. After all, what have I said?” 

“What you will never repeat in my presence. 
You have no children of your own. You do not 
know their power to unite a husband and wife.” 

“ Mark my words, Mrs. Sarel ; you will be sorry 
you forgot yourself like this,” said Mrs. Millington 
with an assumption of dignity. “The time will 
come when you may want a friend. You will never 

find one in me.” 

13 


194 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


She hurried out, clicking the little garden gate 
sharply as she did so. 

Fay was allowed out-of-doors now, and had been 
playing on the other side of the garden. She ran up 
with a great bunch of flowers in her hands. “ Mam- 
ma, darling, I picked these for you. See, aren’t the 
sweet peas pretty?” 

The perfume seemed suddenly to calm Isabel. 
Why should she care what outsiders did and said, 
when those in her own little world were so loyal and 
true to her? 

This was the moment when all the beauty and 
worth of her conquest of Fay’s childish heart made 
itself most keenly felt. Fay had learnt to love her 
so well, and as she pressed her fresh kisses against 
her mother’s pale cheek, Isabel’s anger died away, 
and a sweet sense of peace returned. 

Mrs. MiUington neither looked nor felt as jaunty 
as usual as she walked along the dusty road. She 
informed Beryl that evening that she considered Mrs. 
Sarel a most undesirable person, and that she was 
quite sorry she had called. 

“Which,” commented Betty privately, “means 
that Mrs. Sarel didn’t bow down to mamma’s 
opinions.” 

And, as usual, Betty was more or less right. 


CHAPTER XI. 


THE CUP OF CIRCE. 

H ’^THUR FARRAXT was delighted with his 
wife’s portrait. It was a conscientious piece 

' of work, and very like the beautiful original 

it disappointed. It was almost completed when 
Buchanan fixed a day for the children to go to 
Eastbourne, about a fortnight after Mrs. Millington’s 
unwelcome visit to Isabel. 

Adrian had yielded to persuasion, and stayed on at 
Allaronde, but he insisted that he should return to 
Lettice Close directly his family had left it, despite 
the comfortless presence of the painters and white- 
washers. He saw his wife daily in the garden, but 
each interview left him more and more dissatisfied. 

Isabel had scorned to tell him of Mrs. Millington’s 
visit and the vague allegations it hurt her to recall. 
Her nature was too reserved, and her deep love for 
Adi’ian was much too sacred to her to be expressed 
in words. It is only the thinner and poorer senti- 
ments that can be discussed and analyzed. Yet she 

could not blind herself to the fact that he was changed 
195 



196 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


— moodier, more silent, and paler than he used to be. 
When two people habitually see each other every 
hour, a very short absence will sometimes cause a 
surprisingly wide gulf to open between them. 

When a woman flings her whole heart at the feet 
of some man who cannot love her, when the pitiful 
word “ unrequited” is written in her history, she is 
apt to think no pain can equal hers. The mourning 
widow, in the darkness of her first despair, can al- 
most smile at such a delusion. Surely she, and no 
other, has drunk the cup of suffering to the dregs. 

But it is to neither of these that “sorrow’s crown 
of sorrow” really belongs. It is to her who has once 
been loved, and finds the beloved object wearying of 
her. Death, falsehood, indifference, these are as noth- 
ing compared to the anguish of the knowledge that 
the fire of passion has utterly burned out. 

Isabel was seldom conscious that Adrian was liv- 
ing in a world of his own. His mere presence satis- 
fied and occupied her. Now she felt that the current 
of their lives was indeed drifting apart, and tried 
resolutely to thrust away a growing terror lest, after 
all, Philippa’s hand might be in all this. 

Another vexation was experienced by Adrian the 
first time he saw Fay. The child was looking very 
pretty with her little, thin face, fast regaining its 
roses, set in short curls ; but, capricious as ever, she 


TEE CUP OF CIRCE. 197 

had almost forgotten him in her new enthusiasm for 
her mother. 

“ You never sat by me, papa ; you never held my 
head when it ached. I cried for you at first, but you 
never came.” 

That was her greeting, and then she chattered on 
fibout the sea and the shells, and did not seem to care 
to play with him and cling about him as of old. 
Her heart had only room for one idol at a time, and 
her father had fallen from his pedestal. 

Randie, though still very weak, was now allowed 
to be carried out into the sunshine for a few mo- 
ments. He smiled at his father, but it was not the 
same smile with which he looked up at the mother 
round whose neck his thin arm was flung. 

So the children, in all innocence, did their share to 
strengthen the growing estrangement between the 
two. It is seldom one great event that causes such 
ruptures ; rather a sequence of trifles which are only 
gradually and very slowly perceived. 

Each faintly wronged the other in thought. 
Adrian believed that Isabel had in a measure alien- 
ated Fay from him. Isabel, making her life-long 
mistake of inability to realize that in all things his 
art came first, connected the change in him with 
Philippa Farrant’s influence. Both were far from 
the truth. Adrian’s thoughts were perpetually with 


198 


THE POWER OF THE DOO. 


his picture. Visions of a great success alternated 
with the old chilling doubts and fears. 

The last meeting before their departure was not a 
happy one to him, though Isabel was greatly com- 
forted by the warmth of his parting kiss and words. 
She had no idea that it had cost him an effort to be 
affectionate, or that he was feverishly anxious to 
shut himself up in the empty cottage, and work ab- 
solutely undisturbed at the picture. 

She was to take the children to Eastbourne next 
morning, with the faithful Aline, and felt like a 
child herself at the prospect of the little holiday. 
Their quarantine was not strictly at an end, but the 
childless old people who were so eager to welcome 
them had no fears. 

Philippa had in vain tried her utmost to persuade 
Sarel to continue at Allaronde until his wife’s re- 
turn, making the last touches of the portrait the ex- 
cuse to her husband, but urging “ Sister Helen” as a 
much more cogent reason to the artist himself. She 
was hurt and piqued to a degree that surprised her 
by his determination to leave, and, while he was at 
Lettice Close, went down to her favorite place among 
the woods to think and dream without fear of inter- 
ruption. 

Arthur had gone out in his chair, although the sky 
was dark and the air somewhat thundery. A storm 


THE CUP OF CIRCE. 


199 


had been brooding all day, and there was a heavy 
stillness. It was not like that exquisite afternoon in 
the first fresh glory of summer, when she had heard 
little Fay singing on her father’s shoulder. The fox- 
gloves were gone, the birds silent, and the hedges 
showed only a few dull purple nightshade fiowers in 
the place of the tender loveliness of the June roses. 

There are days toward the end of July when it is 
felt that nature has by no means redeemed the prom- 
ise of May. The foliage is thick and rather sombre, 
the fruit still green and uninteresting. There is nei- 
ther the gladness of spring, with its parquetry of 
bluebells and dancing daffodils, nor the flashing 
splendors of the changing autumn tints. The busy 
worker is idle and languid over her siesta, and there 
is a sense of accomplishment much less fascinating 
than the incompleteness of the earlier months. 

It was some time since Philippa had been alone 
with her old weary distaste for her life, but to-day it 
was strong upon her, nor did she try very hard to 
resist the overwhelming melancholy that possessed 
her. She made a faint effort to be cynical over her 
own depression, and only succeeded in becoming sad. 
To think we know that all is vanity is not in the 
least a consolation. 

Philippa’s thoughts turned to her portrait and to 
its painter. It had disappointed her acutely. She 


200 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


had lately seen something new in her own face, her 
own eyes, and she had relied upon finding this added 
charm in the portrait. It was not there, therefore 
she might infer that Adrian could not see it. After 
all, he did not really understand her, did not know 
how she admired him, believed in him. 

Lately he had avoided the subject of “Sister 
Helen” with a sort of shyness. If she had been a 
real woman and he had loved her, he could scarcely 
have been more reticent. The intimacy between 
them had lessened instead of increased. Her friend, 
as she had dreamed him, was to leave her to-mor- 
row. He had no wish to stay. He would take with 
his picture all he had wanted of her, and he denied 
her even the recompense of watching it grow into 
perfection. Men were all alike, she thought with a 
bitterness that wronged the husband who was so true 
to her. 

To the poet, the painter, the writer, a woman is 
nothing^but a subject. If she is beautiful, she may 
serve as a model. If she is tender and loving, she 
may inspire a tinkle of rhyme or a few chapters of 
his novel. 

There was the sudden heavy splash of a few great, 
ominous raindrops upon the leaves above her head, 
but Philippa did not heed them. A voice within her 
was asking her a question, and demanding, insisting 


THE CUP OF CIRCE. 


201 


upon, an answer. What was this man to her, that 
he usurped all her thoughts? What was it that had 
made the past weeks so golden, the future so gray of 
aspect? What was his success, his failure, to her? 

There was a blinding flash of lightning, followed 
by a low, deep roll of thunder. Nearer and nearer it 
came, until it seemed to crash just above her. A 
storm always filled her with a certain sense of exul- 
tation. Fear she did not know. 

She stood quite still, for louder than the thunder 
there had sounded in her heart those three words of 
self-surrender every woman hears once in her life- 
time. She may speak them to herself alone in proud 
triumph, in timid happiness, or with the pang of 
utter hopelessness; but she is not indeed a woman 
until that hour of keenest joy or sharpest torment is 
overpast. 

“I love him.” For a few moments, whilst the 
storm raged round her, she whispered it over and 
over again. Standing alone and utterly absorbed she 
forgot Arthur, forgot that she was a wife, and only 
exulted in the knowledge that at last, when it might 
well have seemed too late, love had come to her. 
She was ready to admit it, to glory in it, not to look 
at it in its true, its repulsive light. 

The voices of honor and duty were silent. Her 
heart and conscience were for the time emptied of 


202 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


everything except this burning, delicious pain, this 
rapturous certainty that no one except herself had 
ever loved as she did. It was not a mere vulgar 
preference, she said to herself proudly. All her life 
she had longed to do some service to art. Here it 
lay ready to hand. Adrian was cramped, lonely, 
misunderstood. 

She was so wrought up by the sudden strength of 
this wild passion that had been dormant until then 
that she looked forward fearlessly and unhesitatingly 
to taking the great step from which she had once be- 
fore receded with a certain terror. She could dare 
anything, do anything now. Fear she would never 
know again, could she once accomplish her heart’s 
desire. 

It might be that Adrian felt as she did, that the 
same magic suddenness of knowledge might come to 
him also. If he left his mean surroundings, and 
came away, with her fortune to make his way easy, 
and her love to heap up a measure of joy unknown 
before, she might give the world a great painter. 
She magnified the possibilities of his talent till it 
became genius. 

So distorted were Philippa’s conceptions that she 
regarded the new self of this magnificent future with 
admiration. It was not for herself that she proposed 
to leave her husband. It was for the sake of art. It 


THE CUP OF CIRCE. 203 

is so easy to make the blackest sin look white when 
desire points the way. 

Except those first few drops, no rain had fallen, 
and the heat was intense. The thirsty earth was 
waiting for its refreshment. That solemn childish 
aith that the thunder is the awful voice of the Deity 
did not revert to this woman, who, after dreaming 
all her life, had suddenly awakened, reckless of all 
consequences. 

She would gladly have prolonged this hour of rev- 
elation but for the thought that by this time Adrian 
might have come back. A very definite action must 
be taken that evening, and surely, surely she had 
power enough at least to keep him beside her. 

Just as she reached the house the rain fell in tor- 
rents. It soaked Adrian, who was returning from 
Lettice Close, and added to the depression that for 
the last few days had overwhelmed him. He was 
jealous and sensitive, and Fay’s childish indifference 
had hurt him. She had been his greatest pleasure at 
home, and now she seemed to have forgotten her 
love. Children were, after all, unsatisfactory, he 
decided. 

And then he harked back to the old, ever-recurrent 
sense that fame was the only goal worth a man’s 
struggle. If he had but means to work out his own 
conceptions slowly and lovingly! As it was, the 


204 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


payment for the portrait would be swamped in the 
doctor’s bill, in a hundred other trifling debts. If he 
did his duty he would at once begin a series of “pot- 
boilers” — hateful phrase ! It was to him hard, when 
easy moneyed leisure was granted to so many to bo 
squandered in mere idleness, that he should not have 
it at his command for the labor in which he de- 
lighted. 

Circumstances was curiously favorable to Philip- 
pa’s wish that they two might be alone. The storm 
had prostrated her husband with one of his terrible 
headaches, and as she was dressing he sent her a 
message to say that he could not dine that evening. 

Their last together? or but the prologue to a long 
vista of days, of years? No; she would not look for- 
ward. 

She put on a dress which, in its severity, had some 
suggestive likeness to the draperies that clothed “ Sis- 
ter Helen,” but, with an impulse she did not seek to 
define, she wore none of her usual jewels. She was 
a little pale, but her pallor merely gave a softness to 
her beauty that was not lost upon Adrian when she 
entered the room. 

Conversation was difficult at dinner, and eating 
was but a pretence with both. They had been alone 
once or twice before, but until to-day Philippa had 
been bright and animated, a perfect hostess. 


THE CUP OF CIRCE. 


205 


“ I am going into the studio,” she said as she rose. 
“ I thought I should like to have a last look at the 
picture before you packed it.” 

When Adrian joined her ten minutes later, there 
was no lamp in the room; only the moon, which 
shone out broad and serene after the storm, and 
streamed through the open window. 

She was standing beside the great easel, looking 
down eagerly to the outlined face so like her own in 
feature. Ei:t in the place of the despair and set reso- 
lution in the picture, the living, breathing woman, 
so much lovelier, had her eyes bright with unshed 
tears. 

“ I am saying good-by to art, you see,” she began, 
turning toward him with that new, dangerous soft- 
ness of manner. “ When you are gone, I shall not 
have the delight of watching the visions of your 
brain grow visible. It has been a delight that was 
half a pain. Ah, I envy you with all my heart — I, 
who can do nothing.” 

Adrian smiled bitterly. “ It is pretty to hear you 
say so, but it sounds an irony. My life has been only 
a long disappointment. To you, with your lofty 
ideals, it is sordid to confess that art cannot flourish 
on a crust. No; I am a poor man, and I have no 
right to think of painting anything above the level of 
the ‘Convalescent.’ I am a failure.” 


206 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


“You are unhappy. I am unhappy too. And yet 
there is happiness enough in the world, if we could 
but grasp it.” 

“Unhappy? You? With everything a woman 
most desires, wealth, beauty, and a husband who 
worships you, your lines have been cast in very 
pleasant places, different enough from the thorny 
paths we others walk in.” He had never spoken so 
openly before ; but then he had never felt so over- 
wrought, so hopeless. 

“I tried to be your friend, and you repulsed me,” 
she said in a low, stifled voice. 

“I? I have not so many friends that I could afford 
such churlishness.” He was almost rough, yet she 
was not repelled. 

“ I asked you to stay, but you would not ; yet when 
you asked a favor, I granted it so gladly.” 

“You have been very good to me, much better 
than I deserve. It is not often a penniless artist 
has so gracious a patroness,” he replied slowly. 

Philippa winced. “ Do not use that hateful word. 
Say rather that you honor me by making me your 
model. I could do more, much more, if only you 
would not go. Tell me the truth ; is it your wife’s 
wish?” 

“My wife? She knows nothing, cares nothing 
about pictures.” 


THE CUP OF CIRCE'. 


207 


Still absorbed in his own dream, he had no suspi- 
cion of her meaning. To his wonder and pain, she 
made no answer, but, sinking down upon a sofa, hid 
her face in her hands. He had always had a shrink- 
ing from seeing a woman in tears, but Philippa’s 
customary repose and reserve gave this feeling an 
added acuteness. 

“What have I done?” he asked. 

There was a compassion in his voice she took for 
tenderness, and it thrilled her whole being. She did 
not reply. She wanted to hear him speak in that 
tone again, and he continued, hurriedly and more 
coldly, “ If I have vexed you in an way, let me beg 
for forgiveness. You are unnerved by the storm.” 

Then she looked up again — an eloquent look, full of 
love and longing. Adrian would not have been a 
man, far less an artist, if his pulses had not quick- 
ened. He did not love her; but though there was no 
love in the eyes that met but did not answer her 
own, there was admiration, and she took it for some- 
thing other and more precious. 

Carried away by her own emotion, exquisite in the 
flattering moonlight, she staked her all in one des- 
perate appeal. She put her hand upon his arm, and 
whispered, “You have done nothing, Adrian. But 
I have learnt to love you.” 

He stepped back with a white, startled face, 


208 THE POWER OF THE DOG. 

shakeD roughly from his reveries, and utterly at a 
loss for words that could express the inexpressible. 

She went on quickly, persuasively, with an elo- 
quence that surprised herself, “ You think me mad, 
wicked, but I know you. I alone understand you. 
I know you are a genius, not to be governed by the 
laws that govern the rest of the world. I would give 
up all to follow you, to be with you. Your 
wife ” 

‘‘Silence!” Adrian spoke sternly, harshly. That 
word had been a spell to conjure him back to reality, 
to prove to him that he was not dreaming. “ Do not 
dare to name her,” he went on. “Can you suppose 
that I am as ready to be false to her as you to your 
unhappy husband? I am no saint, but, thank God, 
I have been true to the woman I vowed to love at 
the altar.” 

“ You never loved her. You have no heart, or you 
would pity my weakness. Think what it is to have 
been bound all the years to one you cannot even 
honor. I married Arthur Farrant from compassion. 
I never lived until I knew you, never even thought I 
loved until you were beside me. You are misunder- 
stood, and you are wasting your great gifts. I have 
what the world calls wealth, nothing else, and I am 
miserable.” 

Again she hid her face, and the tears fell fast. 


THE CUP OF CIRCE. 


209 


She was so beautiful, and he so easily swayed by 
passing impulse. Just for an instant there flashed 
across him a vision of himself, away from all his 
petty troubles, living in an atmosphere of art and 
beauty. It faded, and gave place to nobler instincts. 
Philippa, in her humiliation, could have borne any 
punishment better than the cold indifference he 
strove to assume more successfully than he imagined. 

“ There is no such thing as happiness, I think,” he 
added. “To-morrow I shall go my way, and you 
will soon forget. Your duty will ” 

“ Not that hateful word. The Adrian Sarel I have 
known is no preacher of impossibilities. Tell me to 
endure, or to suffer in silence, as I must now you 
scorn me, repulse me; but do not talk of duty.” 

There was a despair in her voice that touched 
him to relent a little, though it did not shake his 
fixed resolution. 

“We must part,” he said slowly. “ But I too shall 
find it hard to forget.” 

“ Forget my madness,” she retorted quickly. “ Let 
us be as we were — friends. Heaven knows I need a 
friend bitterly enough.” 

It is always the woman who proposes these impos- 
sible courses. Adrian did not perceive the quick 
subterfuge that was still to connect them. He was 
struck with the pathos of the fate that made an un- 
14 


210 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


known, unsuccessful artist so much in the life of such 
a woman as Philippa Farrant. 

He took her hand, and touched it with his lips. 
Without another syllable of farewell, she left him to 
muse alone for hours beside the unfinished picture. 

Very early next day he left Allaronde, but it was 
with a sense that the most exciting scene in his life 
drama had been played. 

Philippa did not shrink from the remembrance of 
that night as one of her proud temperament might 
have been expected to shrink. She had been precipi- 
tate with her desperate confession, but she was not 
despairing. Adrian’s very anger gave her hope that 
he found it a battle to put aside the gift she had cast 
at his feet. Humility is an essential part of a great 
passion. At last self had ceased to be the first object 
in life to Philippa. Love had already cast out pride. 


CHAPTER XII. 


MAN PROPOSES. 

TS. Millington had decided that the 
might be desirable as a husband for 
she had not reckoned without her 
host. Her experienced eye had perceived that, as far 
as extreme shyness would permit, the Reverend Abel 
Hertford was in love with her step-daughter. 

“ When poor, dear father began to keep a curate, 
he really might have got a better article for the same 
money,” had been Betty’s verdict upon the new- 
comer, nor had a year’s intimacy at all altered her 
opinion or increased her respect. 

He was a very quiet youth, whose only idea of dis- 
sipation was a tournament at the British Chess Club, 
whose chief delight the working out of problems of 
his beloved game. He never played chess in Lent, 
and what the relinquishment of this harmless indul- 
gence cost him no one knew but himself. He was 
conscientious and a gentleman, though of insignifi- 
cant aspect. 

Beryl pitied him for his awkwardness and silence, 
211 



HEN M 
curate 
Beryl, 


212 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


and entertained him very kindly when he came to 
the vicarage. He was not in the least inclined to 
view life from any worldly-wise standpoint, and he 
fell in love with her a long time before Mrs. Milling- 
ton had given up hope of Harold Buchanan. 

When, therefore, that astute lady embarked in a 
series of small tennis parties, and constantly pressed 
Mr. Hertford to drop in for supper, the poor fellow 
stepped into a fool’s paradise. He was a wretched 
classic, and therefore a weariness to Mr. Millington, 
who, however, never interfered with any social ar- 
rangements, and bore patiently with the young man’s 
presence. 

Mrs. Millington gave him abundant encourage- 
ment, and Beryl, absorbed in her own private dreams, 
was not observant of this. She had never confessed 
to herself that there was only one man in the world 
for her, but a really astute woman might easily have 
read the fact in her calm indifference to all others. 

Betty alone watched what to her was a farcical 
comedy with unfailing interest and amusement. 
The boys always called the Reverend Abel ‘‘the 
White Knight,” because they considered he resem- 
bled the unappreciated bard in “ Through the Look- 
ing Glass.” 

The holidays were close at hand, to Betty’s rap- 
ture. The boys were her idols, and she looked for- 


MAN PROPOSES. 


213 


ward with ecstasy to long days in the woods, long 
evenings out sugaring in the churchyard or the plan- 
tations. There is no period in life that looks quite as 
long as the summer holidays before they have actu- 
ally begun, when we are still at school. But to Betty 
the last week before them was an eternity, and her 
only really happy moment was when, each evening, 
she could scratch off the past day from her special 
calendar. 

Mamma has become quite mad about ‘the White 
Knight,’” she wrote confidentially to Bevan, “and 
if you can’t hit upon some plan for scaring him 
away, we shan’t have any fun.” 

Bevan’s inventive brain was equal to the task, but, 
luckily for his intended victim, his carefully made 
schemes went agley, for an unforeseen and to him 
unknown reason. 

Spurred on by Mrs. Millington in many tete-h-tetes 
with that energetic lady, the curate very suddenly 
and clumsily proposed to Beryl. 

They were standing under the big pear tree, and 
the sunset cast an unbecoming glow on his coppery 
head and the spectacles which, in his excitement, he 
had tilted up in a manner that was highly quaint. 
He was Beryl’s first lover, but she could not help see- 
ing that he looked very ridiculous, in spite of her 
surprise and fright. For when the fateful and most 


214 THE POWER OF THE DOG. 

unexpected words were actually spoken, she felt a 
decided inclination to run away. 

They were a nervous couple. The curate was 
amazed at his own audacity, and Beryl was per- 
turbed and distressed. Something made her even 
more tender-hearted than usual, and she spoke her 
bashful though decided refusal very gently. 

He had never loved her so well as when he went 
back to his solitary lodgings. He got out his chess 
board after the meal Ije could not eat. But he failed 
to find any consolation even there. 

Mrs. Millington had been holding her mothers’ 
meeting as usual on that afternoon, and though the 
blinds of the dining-room, where it was held, were 
drawn down, to exclude the sun, the familiar drone 
of the concluding hymn came out to Beryl as she sat 
down on a garden seat to think over this wonder- 
ful occurrence. She knew that she had but a few 
moments to herself, and felt thankful for even the 
briefest time in which to collect her thoughts. 

Of course, no one must guess what had occurred, 
she decided innocently. Poor Mr. Hertford should 
not be laughed at by the boys. He had told her he 
was going away for his annual holiday. He would 
be absent a month, and by the end of that time he 
would probably have forgotten all about her. This 
was her comfortable conclusion. 


MAN PROPOSES. 


■ 215 

Luckily, the hymn was a long one, and Mrs. Mill- 
ington had a scolding to administer after it. 

Betty, with the twins as most willing if incompe- 
tent coadjutors, had been watering vigorously a 
little earlier. It was a beautiful garden, in spite of 
the old adage about too many cooks. The whole 
family gardened as best they could. Beryl knew 
every plant in it, and now the mignonette she had 
sown and the heliotropes she had nursed were testify- 
ing their gratitude in the subtle flower language we 
call perfume. There were hedges of sweet peas, 
thick-set with fluttering treasures of purple and rose 
pink, and there were the heavy-headed clove carna- 
tions that never flourish unless they are much tended 
and much loved. 

By the time Mrs. Millington had finished and come 
bustling into the fragrant air, it had exercised its 
peaceful influence, and Beryl was knitting as serenely 
as if nothing had happened. 

“I Thought Mr. Hertford was here,” began her 
stepmother. 

‘‘So he was, but he has gone,” answered Beryl 
with an effort to be collected. 

“ What did he come for?” asked Mrs. Millington 
pointedly. 

“ I suppose he came to call.” 

“ Now, Beryl,” said her stepmother, “ don’t prevari- 


216 


THE POWER OF THE DOQ. 


cate. Mr. Hertford has never called before without 
staying for tea. I know well enough he came for 
something else. Come, tell me all about it. I am 
not angry. On the contrary, I am very well pleased 
to find you have not forgotten what I said on the day 
after Mrs. Bunting’s ball. Ah, Beryl, you see I was 
quite right when I said you were old enough to be 
married.” 

Mrs. Millington spoke with a sort of cumbrous 
playfulness, for she was simply delighted with this 
eligible opportunity of proving that she had seen it 
all from the very first. To say “ I told you so” is 
one of the chief pleasures of existence to minds of 
certain calibre. 

Beryl saw at once that her wisest course was to 
state the truth quite simply. It had, to her, been so 
impossible to think of marrying the curate, that it 
had not dawned upon her that any one could fail to 
share her opinion. Modesty and kindness had made 
her wish to keep this secret, but it was not to be. 

She spoke as gently as usual, but with a new touch 
of girlish dignity. “ I think, mamma, you are mak- 
ing a great mistake. Mr. Hertford asked me to 
marry him, but of course I refused.” 

“You refused? And may I ask why?” 

Though she would have died rather than confess 
it, she had herself never received an offer until the 
4 


MAN PROPOSES. 


217 


happy day that had assured her she should reign in 
the vicarage. Deep in her heart lay the masculine 
conviction that all women married directly they got 
the chance of doing so. There was, therefore, a note 
of genuine surprise as well as curiosity in her ques- 
tion. 

Beryl’s cheeks flushed, but she answered bravely 
and briefly, “Because I did not care for him and 
never could.” 

Mrs. Millington was desperately anxious to get rid 
of Beryl. There was a silent rebuke in her look, a 
silent reproach in her eyes, at certain of her doings 
that galled her. She was aware that Beryl talked 
constantly of their dead mother to the younger ones, 
and fancied that if she were out of the house, her 
own influence might be paramount. 

“Really, Beryl, you are ridiculous, and talk like 
some silly, sentimental schoolgirl. Let me tell you 
that you are getting on. You will be nineteen very 
soon, and this is probably the only chance you will 
ever have. I am quite aware that Mr. Hertford is a 
poor man, but he has expectations, as I happen to 
know. It was most presumptuous of you to dismiss 
him in such a summary fashion, and if I were not 
fortunately at hand to put matters upon a better foot- 
ing, you would have cause to regret it all your days.” 

“I have always been obedient to you, mamma,” 


218 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


broke in Beryl, keeping her indignation in check with 
an effort, ‘‘but this is a matter in which I must 
judge for myself alone. I cannot marry Mr. Hert- 
ford, because, as I said before, I do not love him.” 

This outburst from one usually so gentle was a dis- 
agreeable shock to her stepmother. The ignorant 
always crave for dominion, and to dictate was one of 
Mrs. Millington’s chief pleasures. Beryl looked and 
spoke with a touch of womanly determination that 
was quite new, but she was not going to yield this 
point without a struggle. 

“You are speaking in a way that is quite in- 
decorous,” she rejoined with tartness. “You know 
nothing about it. Properly engaged, you would very 
soon become as fond of Abel as there was any neces- 
sity for you to be. Only last Sunday you gave your 
class a lesson on duty. Practise what you preach. 
Beryl, and do not add to your father’s worries by 
being so silly and so obstinate.” 

Whilst Mrs. Millington spoke, something had 
flashed across Beryl’s mind that made her adamant, 
and caused her usual shyness to vanish. 

“It is not my duty,” she said very boldly. “It 
could not be right for me to marry like that. I never 
will. You made me very miserable once before, 
mamma, when you talked of this. Please do not 
say anything more.” 


MAN PROPOSES. 


219 


At this juncture they were interrupted, much to 
Mrs. Millington’s annoyance; but Beryl had made 
up her mind how she could put an end to the affair. 
She had refused to go to her father about that trivial 
matter of the satin shoes, but this was different. 
Busy or not, she must make him her ally. 

Mr. Millington was, as usual, sitting by the study 
window. He looked perfectly contented, and held a 
vellum-covered volume of an obscure Greek com- 
mentary in his hand. Beryl was very loth to inter- 
rupt his evidently happy studies. She wondered a 
little wistfully if he had observed that she had care- 
fully dusted and arranged his books and papers, or 
noticed the little blue pot of pinks and sweetbriar 
upon the writing table. 

The vicar started as the door opened gently. He 
was often conscience-stricken concerning his absorp- 
tion in unprofitable study. He loved to think and 
write, and deduce his own not particularly new or im- 
portant conclusions from all this. V ague and dreamy 
was often his performance of parish duties in conse- 
quence. That intense boy’s love for Alice Coventry 
had led him in the wrong groove for the rest of his 
life. 

He was unfitted for the cares of a parish and a 
family. He looked as if he belonged to a college 
cloister instead of a large, bustling household. He 


220 rHE POWER OF THE DOG. 

roused himself now with a strong effort, and tried to 
bring his mind a few centuries forward. 

“ Oh, Beryl, my dear, what is it you want?” 

His eyes were far away, but she had no alternative 
but to tell her story whilst she had the opportunity. 

She told it with a pretty, girlish hesitation, but 
ended with a loving entreaty that effectually touched 
her hearer: “Father, dear, you know I would do 
anything for you. For your sake I have always 
tried to be obedient to mamma. I never want to 
trouble you with my own little affairs; but I know 
you will be on my side in this. You will tell her I 
cannot marry Mr. Hertford, and beg her, beg her not 
to speak of it. It is so hard on him and on me.” 

She hid her face in her hands and cried softly. 
There was a new feeling in her heart that had dis- 
pelled all reserve. 

Mr. Millington felt a shock of displeased surprise 
that already he should be in danger of losing this 
sweet daughter of his. He cared for her much more 
than she knew. Again to-day she looked very like 
the one woman he had loved. He spoke with a ten- 
derness that was as welcome as unusual. 

“ My dear child, in my opinion you are far too 
young for marriage. Heaven forbid I should ever 
give you to a man you did not love. I promise you, 
my child, your wishes shall be respected.” He was 


MAN PROPOSES. 


221 


no longer dream}^ but spoke with comforting deter- 
mination. 

Beryl kissed him silently. It seemed to her then 
as if she had never pitied him half enough before. 
He had been very weak in making his own second 
marriage. To-day’s events gave her some knowl- 
edge of what this weakness had meant. With such 
an example before her, she was not likely to follow 
suit. 

Her father returned the kiss. “ You are a great 
comfort to me, Beryl, and very like her. There, go 
along; be a little girl again, and forget it all.” 

But he remembered his promise, and, almost for 
the first time since his marriage, spoke with such 
decision to Mrs. Millington that, though she vented 
her irritation in many petty ways, she never again 
alluded directly to Mr. Hertford’s offer. She had 
been a trifle scared to discover that, for all his gentle 
apathy, her husband could be sternly firm when he 
considered it expedient. 

The poor “White Knight” left for his lugubrious 
holiday next morning, much to Betty’s satisfaction. 
She had no idea that his unlucky little love-story had 
been begun and ended; indeed, she soon forgot all 
about him in the excitement of a new interest. 

There was a little copse, not far from the common 
where Kismet had been buried, which was one of her 


222 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


favorite haunts. Rare flowers, ferns, butterflies, and 
moths were here to be discovered by those who knew 
where to look for them. In a sequestered nook on 
the outskirts there lurked in spring a few clumps of 
the quaint spotted fritillary that still nods in purple 
profusion over the Islip meadows, and has been so 
remorselessly rooted out of Middlesex. 

Betty had seen the place noted in a natural history 
of the county as one of the habitats of the Purple 
Hairstreak butterfly. They had none in the collec- 
tion, and she had often and often hunted the oak 
leaves to find the caterpillar, of which she occasion- 
ally thought she saw traces. 

With what Betty considered to be her usual Sun- 
day ill-fortune, she actually saw a number of the 
coveted insects flying high among the branches of a 
tall oak tree. The Sunday afternoon walk was al- 
ways a hard trial to Betty, for it did seem as if the 
insects knew that they need fear no net, and there- 
fore sunned themselves in unwonted profusion. 

It had been hard to see the lovely, metallic purple 
wings glinting against the gold-green leaves. Betty 
had been a great climber in her youth, to the danger 
of herself and the detriment of her raiment, and, 
after an awful fall that had put out her collar-bone, 
had made a faithful promise to climb no more. 

She did not think of breaking her word, but on 


MAN PROPOSES. 


223 


Monday induced the old gardener to lash two sticks 
together, so that, with a handle about six feet long, 
she could swing her net among the otherwise inac- 
cessible branches, and prepare a delightful surprise 
for the boys in the shape of a complete series of Pur- 
ple Hairstreaks. She had not been fortunate in her 
captures of late, and Sevan had insinuated, with 
shameless ingratitude, that “he didn’t believe she 
was half so keen now that she thought she was grow- 
ing up.” 

She did not confide her plan to any one. Her own 
holidays had begun, so that it would not be difficult 
to slip off unobserved. Betty loved even a small ad- 
venture, and always considered it well worth the 
scolding or punishment in which it was rather apt to 
result. Beryl would be certain to advise her to wait 
for the boys, and this was precisely what she did 
not want to do. 

She went down the glebe meadow at about half- 
past ten on what she smilingly said to herself was a 
regular butterfly day. It was hot, but not sultry, 
and the sk}’’ was almost cloudless. 

“ If the aggravating things are not out now, they 
never will be again,” she said to herself. But there 
they were by the time she reached the little copse, 
where the brambles were coming into pink bloom 
among the underwood. She found at once that her 


224 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


long-handled net was very difficult to wield. The 
delicate purple insect flitted high above it, and after 
over an hour spent in fruitless endeavor, she sat 
down, hot and disappointed, to eat a three-cornered 
puff she had begged of the old cook. It was very 
good, but even new raspberry jam could not assuage 
her vexation. 

Conscience, too, was troublesome, and was getting 
the worst of an internal argument. She had rashly 
promised never to climb again, but surely in a case 
of such extreme importance, she was fully justifled 
in straining a point? Only Beryl was so fearfully 
particular. 

She looked up above her, and beheld the Hairstreaks 
sailing about in all the consciousness of perfect se- 
curity. Then she glanced at the tree. It was a par- 
ticularly tempting one. 

“ Ah, well, I am not as good as Beryl ; but it is so 
much easier for her, for she cares nothing for the col- 
lection.” 

Then she decided, and with easy agility began to 
climb. She found one delightful branch, from which 
she swung her legs to and fro in fearless confidence, 
quite hidden by thickly encompassing boughs. 

I wonder if Charles the Second was as comfort- 
able at Boscobel. Certainly not as happy,” she de- 
cided a moment later, when she easily captured one 


MAN PROPOSES. 


225 


of the Hairstreaks and put it into the killing bottle 
with the true collector’s utter absence of pity. She 
caught a second soon afterward, but the rest were 
rather coy and difficult. 

She was now, however, in high spirits, which were 
suddenly dampened by an apparition of Beryl, who 
had been sent out to take the twins for a walk, and 
had chosen the copse as the coolest place available 
for the purpose. 

“Here come my Roundheads,” soliloquized Betty, 
wondering whether her dangling feet and large, 
dusty shoes were visible from the ground. 

Beryl was looking about for ferns, and certainly 
not troubling herself as to what might be above her. 

“We want to sit down; we are tired,” said Alice, 
who always spoke for herself and twin. “ We want 
a stoty. Berry — not a stupid little boy and girl story, 
but one like Betty tells, with dragons and fairies.” 

They sat down a little way beyond the tree, and 
Betty could hear every syllable they said from her 
airy perch. She had, however, just caught her third 
Hairstreak, so was strengthened in her resolution to 
remain where she was until the series of six had been 
duly bottled. 

Beryl could not invent, but she could remember. 
She always did what the children wished, as long as 
their demands were reasonable, so she threw herself 
15 


226 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


on the short, mossy turf and began obediently: 
“ Once upon a time there was a fairy prince.” 

“Not a fairy prince, but a very commonplace 
young man,” said a laughing voice, and there was 
Harold Buchanan, who had seen the little group 
cross the road into the copse, and had somehow dis- 
covered he had half an hour to spare. “But al- 
though it wasn’t a fairy prince, he had some nice 
sweets in his pocket,” he continued, smiling down at 
Beryl. “ Come, Alice, which do you like best, sweets 
or stories?” 

“Sweets.” The twins spoke together and fer- 
vently. They agreed on most points, especially on 
this one. 

He brought out a good-sized square box, and 
handed it over amid cries of delight. 

“ Now run away and play, for I want to talk to 
your sister.” 

Betty, from her perch, listened with guilty interest, 
touched with a babyish longing for one of those fat 
brown chocolates. 

“All right, we’ll have a shop,” said Alice, and 
the two ran away, utterly forgetting their fairy 
prince. 

Beryl had been quite silent. She sat still on a 
mossy old stump, and played with her ferns. She 
had taken off her hat, and the breeze just ruffled her 


MAN PROPOSES. 


227 


prefcty hair. She was very happy, and made no 
troublesome inquiries as to the cause. 

“ I wanted to tell you a piece of good news,’' began 
Buchanan, leaning over her. 

“Just as Cyril de Vere did with Etheldreda,” 
parenthesized the unseen witness. 

“ When I was at college I was lucky enough to 
save a man’s life when we were out bathing, or he 
thought I did. He is a doctor, and has made a big 
practice in Yorkshire, so large that he wants a part- 
ner. He has offered me the post for a price that is 
ridiculous. It is a good thing, and I think I shall 
accept it.” 

Beryl looked up at him timidly. All the gladness 
had gone out of her face in a moment. He was 
going away. That was really the only fact that she 
grasped. “I hope you will like it very much,” she 
said sedately but not joyously. 

He smiled again. That letter had made him rush 
to a decision that he was tired of living alone. He 
had not meant to tell her quite so soon, but perhaps 
he would never get a sweeter opportunity than hero, 
under the green trees, well out of reach of Mrs. Mil- 
lington. 

Perhaps Harold Buchanan felt more assurance 
than does the ideal lover, but Beryl saw no short- 
comings as he stood there in the flickering gold-green 


228 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


lights and shadows. He was tall and strong, with 
thick brown hair, inclined to curl, and brown eyes 
that to-day wore a new expression. 

Betty felt almost desperate. Supposing, only sup- 
posing, Doctor Buchanan cared for Beryl and was 
going to tell her so, and she obliged to be listening. 
It was too dreadful. She turned scarlet. If they 
only would look up and find her out. But there was 
no chance of that while Beryl sat there with her 
eyes on the ground, and the doctor looked so intently 
at her. 

“ But I do not want to leave Northbent without 
finding out something first.” 

He had lowered his voice, but Beryl sprang to her 
feet, for a well-known voice was calling her ener- 
getically. Two minutes more, and Betty, with a 
torn frock and dishevelled hair, dropped from a 
branch above them. 

“Why, Betty, you don’t mean to say you were 
climbing, after that accident last year and all your 
promises?” Beryl spoke more crossly than she had 
ever done in her life, but Betty felt almost too much 
ashamed to frame a defence for her conduct. 

“I thought you never broke your word,” said Bu- 
chanan, who was annoyed too, but could not help 
feeling pity for the girl’s obvious wretchedness, and 
amusement at the absurdity of the situation. 


MAN PROPOSES. 


229 


“It’s the first time,” she said very truthfully and 
repentantly, and then she told the story of the Purple 
Hairstreaks. 

Buchanan was an entomologist himself, and he 
sympathized; and the good Beryl brought out a 
pocket housewife and mended the frock. 

“I must go now,” said Buchanan with obvious 
unwillingness; “but I shall see you again soon.” 

Alas for Betty’s visions and Beryl’s shy hopes. On 
their return they were met by the news that Beryl 
was to go to Eastbourne for two or three weeks. An 
aunt had invited her to take little Barbara for sea air 
and change. They were to leave two days after- 
ward, and not once did she catch sight of Harold 
Buchanan in the interval. 

Betty was comforted by the rapture with which 
her five specimens were received. 

Beryl innocently wondered why the loquacious 
Alice never alluded to that box of sweets or its donor. 
She did not know that Betty had threatened a perma- 
nent suspension of the thrilling history of “ The Three 
Green Fairy Frogs” if the subject were ever men- 
tioned, and now that all the chocolates were eaten 
Betty’s stores assumed their wonted importance in 
the lives of the twins. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


IMPOTENCE. 

every one who has accomplished creative 
ork knows of the joj’s of inspiration. 
Tith some there is always more of pain 
than of pleasure in production. There is an insatiate 
desire to produce, to demonstrate to the world at 
large that it may be beneath an unattractive enve- 
lope there is yet a hidden power. 

These artists know little of the ecstasy of sheer de- 
light in the work itself. They do not sit smiling 
with fluent pens that flow naturally into tuneful lyrics 
or dainty idyls. If they be musicians, they are over- 
mastered by the storm and stress of the wild ideas 
that are so hard to imprison in the cold black and 
white of the written score. As painters they fare 
worst of all. A haunting, miserable sense of the 
futility of their utmost effort seldom leaves them. 
They paint under protest, as it were. A spirit leads 
them, they scarcely know how, to embark upon a 
great picture, and then deserts them at the crucial 
moment. 



230 



IMPOTENCE. 


231 


Sometimes the birth- throes of their own agonizing 
moments of disillusionment give the world the 
strongest and in some sense the finest work. Car- 
lyle, ill, unhappy, misunderstood, has yet left us a 
goodly heritage that shall endure like a strong rock 
when the facile claimants of the popularity of the 
hour are as forgotten as last year’s leaves. Verily 
they have their reward, even when they drink their 
bitter cup to the lees. 

To these, that gnawing sense of dissatisfaction is 
pathetically familiar, and, like all familiar evils, 
more bearable on that account. Weaker men, like 
Adrian Sarel, who are easily moved by the bright 
promptings of hope and ambition, who have a sort of 
perennial youthfulness of imagination that conjures 
up rosy clouds of airy, delightful day-dreams, these 
are even more sorely smitten when the inevitable 
time of discouragement draws nigh. 

Only the artist knows the pang of sitting down 
with nerveless hands before the blank paper, the 
silent instrument, the empty canvas, powerless to do 
or to create. The thing itself is beyond expression 
hopeless and horrible, but it is worst and cruelest 
when Necessity, like a witch of evil omen, whispers, 
pointing to a wife or little children, “ Whence shall 
ye have bread, that these may eat?” 

Then, in his despair, the artist is false to the mis- 


232 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


tress he has sworn to love and serve. His ideal 
averts her exquisite, fathomless eyes. He dares not 
wait humbly till once again she shall smile upon him 
with the old seduction. He must work to live, must 
prostitute his talent, even his genius, because time 
flows away so fast, because there is no leisure in this 
hard-pressed nineteenth century for the dreamer to 
lie propped on beds of lotos. 

Let those who have leave to work at an art for 
other means than bread, humbly thank the almighty 
Giver of rich gifts. They are saved so much temp- 
tation, so much lonely suffering and sorrow. 

When Sarel left Allaronde and reached his little, 
empty home, his only craving was for unbroken 
solitude. In the bare, newly whitewashed studio he 
set up his great easel. Summer seemed to have 
departed with strange suddenness, for a spell of 
gusty rain followed the long season of sunshine, 
and the north light streamed in very gray and very 
cold. He craved for isolation and silence, two 
things he had formerly regarded with a certain 
aversion. 

The few precautions for disinfecting the rooms the 
children had occupied were quickly taken. Aline 
had accompanied her mistress to Eastbourne, and 
the other servant had been given a holiday. With 
many private fears for Adrian’s comfort, Isabel had 


IMPOTENCE, 


233 


installed a deaf but tolerably competent old woman 
from the village in her place. 

She had been very much surprised to find how 
easily her husband had acquiesced in all these ar- 
rangements. She had no conception of the true state 
of his mind, the repugnance on his part for the old 
lines of life, the eager longing to be absolutely free to 
devote heart and soul and brush to a picture that 
should satisfy himself and make the world acknowl- 
edge it had misjudged him. He wanted fame, but, 
to do him justice, he chiefly longed to do something 
that should seem good in his own eyes. 

He had been so full of his picture that even Phil- 
ippa’s confession had scarcely roused him from his 
waking dreams. Looking back upon the remem- 
brance of her beauty and her tears, he was surprised 
they had not moved him more. He had done right 
to repulse her. He had been true to his wife, and 
certainly he did not love her. These were things 
profitable for reflection. But, on the other hand, he 
had ill requited Philippa, who had given him so much. 

He sat idle before “Sister Helen,” lost in unpro- 
ductive meditation. Now that he was alone, abso- 
lutely uninterrupted, free to paint from dawn to 
dark, what was this that placed a sudden barrier 
between himself and the achievement that had looked 
so close at hand? 


234 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Hitherto he had always been able to work only too 
easily at the things that pleased him. Every mo- 
ment he could snatch, and many moments that ought 
to have been otherwise employed, had been dedicated 
to “ Medea” — an absolute failure, he was quite ready 
now to admit. But to have all the means, and, with- 
out warning, to feel paralyzed, was horrible. 

Several days passed by with leaden slowness ; every 
hour lengthened into a day, every day into a week. 
He painted feverishly, only to undo again and again 
the hopeless result. Still the same faultless ideal 
looking from the clouds, still the same lack of any in- 
spiration to drag her from that airy coign of vantage 
and enshrine her in the picture. Gone was that 
delicious sense of nearing triumph that had embel- 
lished those last sunny days at Allaronde. 

One afternoon the wind howled pitifully with an 
almost autumnal wailing, and the rain beat against 
the window pane, round which the fading roses hung 
heavy heads. Adrian was in a mood accordant with 
the wild, ungenial August that so belied the promise 
of June and July. 

A letter from Isabel, full of pleasure in the warmth 
of her reception and of the happiness of the children, 
only added to his utter depression. Isabel had no 
power to put her love into words in a letter. There 
was no very cogent sign that he was missed or 


IMPOTENCE. 235 

wanted even by her who thought of him every 
moment. 

“ They make quite a daughter of me, and are de- 
voted to the children. They say they would like us 
to live with them altogether ; but as that cannot be, 
they want me to leave Fay behind for two or three 
months after our return. It is something to have 
such good friends, and I feel very rich in their pos- 
session,” she wrote. 

Adrian always depended greatly on surrounding 
circumstances. When the sun shone he was apt to 
be cheerful, but he had nothing of the merry heart 
that makes sunshine for itself. Just now he was sad 
and discouraged with a discouragement that almost 
merited the name of despair. 

He had looked at Sister Helen” so long that her 
charm was fast vanishing in his eyes. There was 
something, he reflected, labored, unreal, unsatisfying 
in the pose. Perhaps, after all, he had misconceived 
his subject. At any rate, he would make a fresh 
study, to see if the fault lay in the kneeling posture 
of the figure. Would it not be more dramatic to 
draw “Sister Helen” standing, pointing with one 
outstretched hand to the flames, with horror in her 
great gray eyes? 

He had not got far with the painting of his origi- 
nal picture. He really was a draughtsman of rare 


236 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


ability, but was always less happy with color. There 
was something very harsh in the flesh tints; nothing 
of the warm, creamy pallor of his model. No emo- 
tion would give Philippa that hardness, that rigidity 
of outline. His “ Sister Helen” wore no latent sug- 
gestion of the passion that had held her in its chains, 
the tenderness now frozen into hatred. She was not 
woman enough. He would dra'w her again in quite 
another aspect, giving her a touch of fear for her 
own sinfulness, less of determination. 

It was not till he stood before a blank canvas with 
the charcoal in his dexterous hand that an inexpressi- 
ble wish for his model rushed over him. She would 
have looked perhaps more beautiful in this position 
than kneeling. Every line of the figure that was so 
Greek would have told forcibly, stretched to its full 
height. What had he been about to let her crouch 
before the fire? It was decidedly all a mistake. She 
had said that she loved him. If that were true, 
would she not come at a word, and, for his art’s sake, 
might ho not send that word? 

He looked aimlessly out of the window that com- 
manded the wet, solitary lane, with its high hedges 
swaying in the wind. Just at the moment when he 
most w’-anted her, he saw Philippa walking along 
alone, heedless of the weather, as if she had been 
drawn there by the strength of his desire. She wore 


IMPOTENCE. 


237 


a long black cloak, but the air had brought no color 
to her cheeks. She was pale and looked worn. 

As she passed she glanced at the window, and their 
eyes met. Adrian forgot his duty then. He had no 
love for her, but his heart ached with a smarting 
sense of failure. If she would sit again, it might be 
that his inspiration would return. 

W ith this one thought he opened the house door 
and followed her bareheaded. She was walking 
very slowly, as if she had expected him to join her, 
and showed no surprise when he did so. He touched 
her hand with an eagerness she noticed joyfully, but 
of wliich he himself was scarcely conscious. 

“ It is bad weather for you to be out, surely. Will 
you come into the cottage and shelter from the rain?" 

“ Thank you ; I will wait a few moments, if it will 
not interrupt your work, for you are busy, and have 
made great progress since I saw you last, no doubt.” 

She spoke in her most conventional manner, al- 
though she made no real effort to call pride to her 
rescue. Supposing she did go into the house, surely 
even the most censorious would admit that she had a 
perfect right to shelter from the storm. 

Adrian led the way into the studio, painfully con- 
scious of the forlorn aspect of the little, silent home. 

“If I had had any idea of being so honored, I 
would have had a fire. As it is, it is not even laid, 


238 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


and my one servant has gone to the village,” he said 
with obvious restraint. 

“ I am not cold.” 

Philippa sat down in an arm-chair and threw back 
her cloak. She looked at the picture long and very 
critically. She was intensely disappointed. The 
painting was utterly wanting in breadth and rich- 
ness. The draperies looked tawdry. Her dis- 
appointment showed itself so plainly in her face that 
Adrian knew his worst fears were justified, and it 
was a hard moment. 

His loneliness found vent. ‘‘You see, it is a dead 
failure after all,” he burst out passionately. “For 
the last week, every touch I have put to the thing 
has made it worse and worse. From the day I left 
Allaronde nothing has gone right. It is beyond my 
strength. I never ought to have undertaken it. All 
these days I have either sat idle before the easel or 
else painted so atrociously as to ruin the little I did 
last week. Now I am haunted by a new idea. I 
think my entire conception was wrong. I wasted so 
much of the beauty of the subject by that kneeling 
position. When I saw you I was trying to sketch 
“ Sister Helen” standing erect, merely pointing to the 
melting figure. There will be the dignity of the full- 
length, and a beauty in the bare arm outstretched, 
with the heavy draperies falling back. And she 


IMPOTENCE. 


239 


must wear crimson robes that will reflect and hold all 
the glory of the flames.” 

He brightened as he spoke. The old enthusiasm 
sparkled momentarily in his eyes, the tendency Phil- 
ippa had so speedily learnt to recognize, to fancy the 
work actually done as nothing beside the new idea 
that should surpass it. He was very much changed 
in appearance, thinner, older-looking, and she saw 
gray threads in his thick hair she had never noticed 
before. 

What a long time that wet week had been ! What 
dismal hours she had spent with her books or with 
Arthur. And all the time Adrian had tried in vain 
to paint without his model, nay, his inspirer. When 
would he learn he could not do without her? When 
would he be ready to break the chains of circum- 
stance, and to live for art and for her. Oh, she 
would be a handmaid to his true sovereign! His 
work would be as dear, as sacred, to her as to him. 
Had she lost all her magic? Did he scorn her, or 
was he only indifferent, absorbed? 

“You cannot paint here, without a model,” she 
began, with conviction in her voice. -“Try again to 
re-paint the head in the first picture. It is a splendid 
conception. You cannot improve it.” 

She did what she had never done before. She 
flung herself upon her knees in the exact pose of the 


240 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


picture ; she assumed that awful, anguished look of 
despair. It had ceased raining, and a pale, watery 
gleam of sunlight brightened the dull room and 
showed its poverty and its neglect pitifully, while it 
lit her figure with a strange luridness. Philippa, in 
that strained, unnatural position, was keenly alive to 
every trifle. » 

Adrian saw nothing, heard nothing, thought of 
nothing, but that his power had returned. Without 
a word he took his brushes and palette, and rapidly, 
skilfully retouched the deep eyes, the pale cheeks, 
the firm chin. Gone was all fear of failure, gone 
even any remembrance of the woman kneeling beside 
him. Sister Helen, with her dishonored beauty, her 
vengeance, was before him. Again he could create. 
The strange difference a few fortunate touches make 
in a picture was amply manifest. 

For half an hour she kept her trying pose, almost 
as motionless as if she had been a statue. The clouds 
parted, and a crimson sunset lit her face with a sullen 
splendor. She was scacrely conscious of the time 
that passed. In a few moments her limbs ached 
with the unaccustomed strain, but she did not 
stir. 

She longed for Adrian to break the silence that 
became almost terrible. How different he looked 
now. There was triumph in the eyes that every 


IMPOTENCE. 


241 


moment sought her own, and yet not hers. He saw 
only Sister Helen; Philippa Farrant, she thought 
bitterly, might die when his picture was finished, 
and he would not greatly care. 

At last she could bear it no longer. The tension 
was too great. A sudden unconsciousness swept 
over her, and with a little, startled cry she fell back 
fainting. 

Adrian turned round sharply, annoyed at the in- 
terruption. He was strangely, unreasonably vexed. 
He had no pity for her weakness. A kind of selfish 
absorption made him indifferent to all but his own 
work. 

He threw down his brushes with visible annoy- 
ance, and glanced at the prostrate figure without 
much compassion. He was surprised at his own 
callousness, and at last roused himself to sprinkle 
some water upon her face. 

She revived with a long sigh, wounded, as she 
battled back to consciousness, to see the coldness 
with which he watched her. 

“ I am so sorry,” she said freely, as she leant back 
in the arm-chair. “ I do not often faint, but the pose 
was trying. I shall be myself again in a moment.” 

“ Forgive me. I was a brute to let you kneel like 
that.” Adrian spoke as if in a dream, and as he 
stretched out his hand to touch the beloved picture, 
16 


242 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


she noticed for the first time the scar on the right 
wrist, and vaguely wondered what had caused it. 

Presently she was able to stand up, and could look 
at “ Sister Helen” for herself. 

“It is magic,” she said joyfully, “magic. In this 
short time you have put something into that face 
that was never there before. The eyes speak now. 
You have painted a living woman.” 

Her glad assurance was too genuine to be assumed, 
he saw. 

“ Do not think of altering one line. It would be 
madness. It is so great as it is.” 

“ I shall owe it all to you if it succeeds. Why do 
you heap such obligations on one who has done noth- 
ing, can do nothing, for you?” Adrian spoke almost 
sullenly. 

Philippa smiled and sighed. “I am still your 
friend, at least. I am very proud of 3’-our friendship, 
and any service I can do is sweet to me.” 

“You saved my chikPs life; you will save my 
name from being quite forgotten. What can I do or 
say to show my gratitude?” 

“You can come back to Allaronde,” she whis- 
pered. 

“Not that. It is impossible.” The thought of 
Arthur’s simple faith and sincerity made his resolu- 
tion hold. 


IMPOTENCE. 


243 


“ But you cannot paint ‘ Sister Helen ’ altogether 
without me. See how you tried.” 

“And how I failed. Yes, I know.” 

“I will do something more,” she said slowly. “I 
will come here now and then. I will make it possi- 
ble. I can fix no times, but you will surely see me. 
It is late now. I must get home. I am quite well 
again. Go on painting whilst the light lasts.” 

Her heart beat so fast, her mind was so busy, as 
she went down the road, that she did not notice she 
was watched. Mrs. Millington was returning from 
a long round of parish visits, and knew that there 
was no mistaking any other woman for Mrs. Farrant. 

Adrian painted until the last rays of light had 
vanished. Later, as he sat smoking and dreaming, 
he fancied he saw the prostrate figure lying before 
him, and the fancy had a strange reality. 

Next morning he perceived that the work he had 
done after her departure was not excellent. “Evi- 
dently I can do nothing without her.” This was his 
conclusion. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


CONFIDENCES. 

ETTY and the boys in holiday spirits without 
Beryl to keep anj^ kind of order had almost 
made Mrs. Millington realize that her step- 
daughter’s marriage might not be such an unmixed 
blessing, after all. 

In the absence of her docile proxy for unpleasant 
duties, she had been obliged to walk a mile in the 
rain to see an old woman who had announced herself 
dying. But she had felt all the truth of the aphorism 
that virtue is its own reward when she had seen Phil- 
ippa Farrant coming out of Lettice Close cloaked 
and veiled. 

Any mystery to which she had a clue rejoiced her. 
From the first she had disliked Adrian Sarel, and 
since her encounter with his wife that dislike had 
become very definite. She was so triumphant in the 
assurance she had been right and that silly, head- 
strong girl in the wrong, that she forgot she ought 
to simulate some decorous horror at such a possible 

scandal in their midst. It might be, perhaps, too 
244 




CONFIDENCES. 


245 


much to say that she liked her neighbors to be faulty ; 
but without their weaknesses to discuss, life would 
have been robbed of its chief savor. 

It is needless to add that she put the worst possible 
construction upon Mrs. Farrant’s conduct. Philippa 
was too cold and haughty, too impatient of inferiority 
and ignorance, to be a favorite with any common- 
minded person. Mrs. Millington longed to pour the 
whole story into the sympathetic ear of one of those 
delightful listeners who could be relied upon to agree 
with her in all points, and to enlarge with righteous 
indignation upon her suggestions. Destitute as she 
was of tact, she had known experiences that decided 
her not to take her husband into her confidence. 

The more she thought over the matter, the more 
she perceived it to be her bounden duty to write and 
warn Isabel that her husband was being led astray. 
She had certainly behaved with shameless rudeness 
and ingratitude on that prior occasion she never par- 
ticularly cared to dwell upon. All the more reason 
to show a Christian spirit, and— to let her know the 
worst. 

It would have been hard to convince Mrs. Milling- 
ton that she was actuated by any motive save one of 
sincere charity, for no amount of skilled argument 
could have induced her to see herself in any light but 
that of a model vicar’s wife and ideal stepmother. 


246 


THE POWER OF THE DOO. 


The anonymous letter is the pet weapon of the 
coward. She felt quite virtuous when, in a feigned 
handwriting, she had indited and posted what she 
considered a very temperate version of a very terrible 
affair, coming in at tea-time in so unwontedly ami- 
able a mood that Betty wondered greatly. Betty’s 
allies, the boys, had gone to London, but as it had 
ceased raining, she asked if she could go for a 
walk. 

“ Make yourself tidy and brush your hair, for your 
father wants you to take a note up to Allaronde. 
Mr. Farrant has sent five pounds for the school 
treat,” said Mrs. Millington. 

Betty acceded joyfully. Allaronde was a sort of 
fairyland to her. She had been through the gardens 
from time to time on similar errands, and had seen 
tantalizing visions of the beauty of the hall. She 
would have liked to explore the house quite by her- 
self, especially as Etheldreda and Cyril de Vere had 
lived there after their marriage. 

But it was not of that famous hero and heroine 
that she thought as, clad in a particularly ugly 
waterproof, she splashed briskly through the puddles. 
She loved her eldest sister better than any one else in 
the world, and she had a certain fear lest she might 
all unwittingly have interfered in a very important 
crisis of Beryl’s life on that well-remembered day 


CONFIDENCES. 


247 


when she had climbed the copse oak for the Purple 
Hairstreaks. 

Clumsy Betty, with her large, shabbily booted 
feet, her plain face and straight hair, was standing 
on the threshold of womanhood, all unconscious 
that she could never be a child again after under- 
standing the meaning of Harold Buchanan’s few 
words and those more eloquent looks Beryl herself 
had not seen. 

To her, love was a wonderful thing, a miracle that 
befell Juliet and Portia and her own valiant favo- 
rites, Rebecca and Diana Vernon. She scarcely 
allowed herself to recall that little scene under the 
flickering green leaves. It somehow seemed almost 
profane. The wild, daring Betty was shy and care- 
ful of this lovely little romance she hardly dared to 
look back at. 

The thoughts of a quite simple young girl about 
love are curiously exquisite, unless pronounced beauty 
makes her precocious and rubs away all the delicate 
glamour. The coming years might hold never a 
lover for this honest, high-souled maiden, v/ho was 
too busy with dreams to trouble much as to dull 
realities. 

Yet she felt quite guilty and hot when a cheerful 
“Where are you off to. Miss Betty?” made her look 
round, to be greeted by Harold Buchanan. 


248 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


“ I am going to dine at Allaronde, to play piquet 
with Mr. Farrant, so we can walk there together,” 
was his remark when she had told her errand. 

He liked Betty immensely, and she was Beryl’s 
sister. The interruption to his sunny little summer 
idyll had given it poignancy. He had not known 
how he should miss the bright face that wore a new 
expression when he looked at it. Beryl absent took 
a touch of the ideal. He would woo more earnestly, 
perhaps less confidently, when she returned, 

Meanwhile, although he did not know it, he was 
desperately in need of a confidante. Men make fun 
of women for liking to pour their love sorrows or joys 
into an attentive ear. They are just as bad them- 
selves, and make the best-natured of their friends 
martyrs to the “inexpressive she.” If they are sus- 
ceptible and have several, they become bores. 

Buchanan was only Scotch by extraction, so he 
did not beat about the bush very long. “I hope 
your sister is enjoying herself,” he began untruth- 
fully. Naturally, he would have liked an impossible 
assurance that Beryl was miserable because she was 
away from him. 

Betty could not have been quite so devoid of tact 
as was supposed. There was diplomacy in her reply. 
“I don’t think Berry much wanted to go. Aunt 
Coventry is deaf; she is a widow, and very Low 


CONFIDENCES. 


249 


Church. She doesn’t know any young people. 
Then, Eastbourne is so fashionable.” 

‘‘ And Miss Beryl does not like that? I thought 
all girls did.” 

“ Berry is not a bit like other girls. She is worth a 
thousand of them. We miss her fearfully at home. 
Till she went, no one had any idea how much she 
did. Why, even father found out his books were 
never dusted, and missed the little vase of flowers on 
the writing-table, and you know what father is; 
everybody does.” 

Betty spoke warmly, but her voice softened as she 
added, with a little look at the cloudy sky that 
touched her listener involuntarily, “We think Beryl 
must be very like our own mother. On the night of 
the ball she looked the image of the picture in the 
hall, in her white dress, with the roses — and the 
shoes,” she concluded, with a laugh at her own 
daring. 

Buchanann was not displeased. “You spoke the 
truth when you said you could keep a secret, Betty. 
You have kept two of mine. I want you to do some- 
thing more. Give me your sister’s address, and 
don’t tell any one I asked for it.” 

“ Five, Compton Terrace.” Betty’s heart thumped 
with excitement, but she was far too impressed with 
the dignity of her position to let anything so vulgar 


250 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


as curiosity creep into her answer. She got her 
reward. 

They had turned up a side path in the Allaronde 
woods that were dim and shadowy in the dusk. 

“Perhaps you can guess that I want to be your 
brother some day. Would you be as good a sister to 
me as you are to her?” Buchanan spoke impulsively. 

Betty held out both her bare, brown hands. “I 
should be so, so glad; but, oh, if we miss her for 
such a little while, what should we all do?” She 
spoke conditionally too. If she knew what Beryl’s 
answer would be, she was too modest and too proud 
to hint at it. 

They went on in silence, both busy with their own 
thronging thoughts. “ Shall I write? Shall I wait?” 
alternated Buchanan. “ How happy she will be when 
she knows,” thought Betty, her quick imagination 
allowing her a thrilling foretaste of first love, though 
he did not give it any kind of personal applica- 
tion. 

“Good-night,” she said, after she had delivered 
her note, and they clasped hands warmly. 

When the door had shut, the girl sighed as she 
turned away. The second great change had come 
into her young life, and she felt overwhelmed by a 
curious sense of responsibility. 

“When Beryl is married, I shall be the eldest 


CONFIDENCES. 


251 


daughter.” It was a dreadful thought to harum- 
scarum Betty, and seemed to bring her dismally 
nearer to the detested period when she should be 
grown up. She remembered how many were Beryl’s 
duties, how carefully fulfilled. 

“ I shall hate it all,” she decided, winking away a 
rebellious tear that would force its way out. “ Doing 
the church vases, paying calls with mamma, arrang- 
ing the flowers, and seeing to all father’s fads. I 
love father, and I do wish he would teach me Greek, 
but I don’t think he loves me as much as Beryl. 
Who could? I shall have to try to take her place, 
and, oh, I shall make such a muddle of it ! But no 
one shall ever know I’m not the gladdest of them all. 
For I am glad really. I like Doctor Buchanan ; I 
always did. He will be a nice brother, and he knows 
something about insects. Very different from ‘the 
White Knight.’ I wonder how he will feel when he 
hears. Mamma will say she saw it all from the first. 
She always does when anything happens that is a 
surprise.” 

Betty said her morning and evening prayers some- 
times very perfunctorily. But as she stood still a 
minute under the dripping trees, the most genuine 
petition she had ever formulated rose to her lips: 
“ Make her happy and make me better.” After that 
she hurried home with a comforting sense of peace. 


252 THE POWER OF THE DOG. 

It would come to all of us if we could pray half as 
unselfishly. 

There were the makings of a noble woman in 
Betty, was Buchanan’s decision when they parted. 

He had come early, and found Arthur Farrant 
lying upon his couch, as usual, in his own pleasant 
stting-room, hung round with the fishing-rods and 
racquets and riding- whips he would never use again. 
He was playing listlessly with his favorite terrier, 
but he looked worn and tired. 

“ I am afraid you are not feeling quite as bright as 
usual to-night, ” said the young doctor kindly. 

“Much the same, thank you; but I am worried 
about my wife. She does not look herself. She 
says she is well, but for the last few days she has 
been different. Be a good fellow, and watch her, 
and tell me honestly if you think anything is amiss. 
I can trust you, and I am so helpless. But before 
I begin on my own affairs, I ought to congratulate 
you on the news I have heard. It will rob me of a 
friend here; still, I cannot but be glad of your luck. 
For you are lucky, Buchanan, and you deserve to 
be. You have given this poor, helpless log many 
good times. You must promise me to come here 
when you want a holiday, and when you marrj^ you 
must bring her for me to see.” 

Buchanan was touched. The little jest was, he 


CONFIDENCES. 


253 


hoped, so near a happy earnest. ‘‘Thank you,” was 
all he put into words, but his voice was expressive, 
and Arthur was content. 

Philippa swept into the room as he spoke, with a 
frou-frou of heavy, dark silks, and a faint, delicate 
perfume. She was looking her best, with a restless 
sparkle in her deep eyes and a rose flush on her 
cheeks. Both men were struck afresh by the power 
of her beauty, and as they dined Buchanan looked in 
vain for any sign of ill-health. 

That she was changed after some fashion there 
v/as no doubt. He could see what her husband saw, 
and something more. A vague suspicion that it was 
some new feeling that lit her eyes with a magic his 
own quiet love made impotent to him struck him 
uneasily more than once. Supposing, after all, that 
she and Adrian Sarel 

But no! perish the thought ! She was his friend’s 
wife; he would not wrong her. Women had become 
suddenly sacred since he was on his way to find all 
the heaven of heavens in one gentle face. 

Philippa played the piano, as usual, while they 
sat over their cards. He was not musical enough to 
know what it was, but the dreamy passion of it, 
albeit so alien to his own steadfast heart, was not 
quite without an influence. 

Arthur was a brilliant card player, and in his one 


254 


THE POWER OF THE DOG, 


possible excitement he forgot his anxiety for a time 
in the interest of the game. His pleasure in trifles 
literally kept him alive, and he was pathetically 
grateful to any one who would indulge it. 

Presently Philippa stopped abruptly, more as if 
she were tired of the piano than because of any legit- 
imate conclusion in the music. They were in the 
north drawing-room, and the chilly night excused a 
cheery wood fire. The two men, absorbed in their 
game, had the couch and the little card-table that 
was screwed to its side just where the easel had stood. 

By the window where she now looked out into the 
darkness she had faltered that mad confession. She 
remembered every word she had spoken. She would 
not recall one of them if she could, for to-day Adrian 
had surely begun to learn that he could not do with- 
out her. 

She felt very tired with the strain and excitement 
of the afternoon, and a sudden sense of oppression 
swept over her. She wanted to feel the cool air upon 
her, to indulge in one of those dreams that were 
hardly possible in this close atmosphere, with the 
monotonous interruptions of the players. 

“I am going out for a few minutes, Arthur,” she 
said as she left the room. 

“ A little too damp, isn’t it?” suggested Buchanan 
as the door shut. 


CONFIDENCES. 


255 


“Nothing ever seems to hurt her in the way of 
weather,” replied her husband. “ She was out walk- 
ing in all that storm this afternoon. She says she 
cannot live without exercise. I thought so too once, 
yet here I am.” 

“ And here we all hope you may be for years yet, 
for the sake of all your friends. Your life is too 
useful.” 

Buchanan spoke with sincerity. He saw qualities 
in Arthur Far rant that few were able to perceive, 
and had learnt more than one wholesome lesson be- 
side that chair. He had been inclined to be some- 
what cynical when he had found that, without 
capital, his “M.D. of Edinburgh” could not secure 
him anything better than Northbent and drudgery. 
He had had his ambitions and his successes, and 
nothing had come of either. 

Arthur’s patience had made him realize how much 
life held for a man who had youth and strength. He 
had despised Northbent as an embodiment of sub- 
urban gentility, lacking all the broader intellectual 
friction of London and the freedom of the country. 
In a more philosophical mood he might have found 
something of the good qualities of both in the little 
place. Now it would always be dear to him, for it 
had brought him Beryl. 

“ I’m getting as sentimental as an undergraduate,” 


256 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


he decided mentally. But he did not object to it. 
Love had a freshness to him it very seldom possesses 
for a man of his age. He had never sown his wild 
oats after the fashion that produces the most abun- 
dant harvest of remorse and shame. 

Philippa did not return, and after the game was 
ended Arthur asked his friend to take her a cloak or 
shawl if, as usual, she had gone out without any wrap. 

He took up the first thing he could find, and opened 
the door. Philippa was close at hand. She heard 
the sound, and came toward him with a smile. 

“ The air is delicious, but Arthur evidently thinks 
I want muffling up. Well, 1 must obey him, and 
you, I suppose.” 

She did not notice that it was the cloak she had 
worn in the afternoon till she felt its damp, heavy 
folds. She was standing on the threshold, and the 
cold electric light of the hall was full upon her. She 
threw it back as it touched her bare neck. 

“Get me something else, please. This is quite 
wet. I wore it to-day in the rain.” 

Buchanan took it obediently, but he started as he 
hung it in its place. His hand was crimson, as if 
with blood, and he saw a great, fresh scarlet stain 
upon the blackness. He guessed in an instant what 
it was. 

“ I must ask you to let me wash my hands before 


CONFIDENCES. 


257 


1 touch anything else. There was paint upon that 
cloak, and they are covered with it.” 

He saw her shiver slightly and turn pale. Then 
he was sure there was some cause for the suspicion 
that had haunted him. Before he went back to 
Arthur he had decided on his course of action. That 
he might be wrong he hoped fervently, that this 
supreme buffeting of fate might be spared the patient 
invalid whose handsome face was so kindly as he 
caressed the two terriers whining for notice. 

“I think you are right about Mrs. Farrant,” he 
began guardedly. “ She is a trifle out of sorts, but 
in my opinion she merely wants a very simple 
remedy. This air is rather relaxing. I should get 
her to go away for a week or two. A little sea or 
mountain is the best of tonics.” 

When he had gone, Arthur repeated this advice to 
his wife. “You are too good to me,” he said, “and 
you must be fearfully tired of Allaronde. Promise 
me to take a holiday.” 

But she would give no promise. “ I would rather 
be at home than anywhere else in the world.” There 
was an unwonted earnestness in her words. 

“ So she may be learning to love me a little even 
now,” thought Arthur. He clung so to the hope that 
never quite deserted him, and sank peacefully to sleep 

with a smile upon his face. 

17 


258 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


But Philippa could not sleep for hours. When she 
had locked her door, she sat down to review her 
position. Could Harold Buchanan by any possi- 
bility have guessed her secret? Surely not; or, if he 
had, what use could he make of his knowledge? 
That he would never tell her husband she was 
certain. 

It had been a long day. It had begun and ended 
badly. But it had held golden hours. If she had 
been so happy merely as Adrian’s humble model, 
what should she be when he acknowledged all his 
debt to her, all her inspiration she had brought him? 
A model, even the imagination that had almost her 
own portrait in ‘‘Medea,” might give the beauty. 
She alone could magnetize him to genius. 

She loosened her heavy hair, and looked into a sil- 
ver hand-mirror. She rejoiced, not that she was so 
beautiful, but that she had a heart to love, a brain to 
think. 

“When our picture is painted, he must under- 
stand, he must know all.” 

Her eyes fell upon a water-color sketch on the wall, 
a masterpiece of delicate coloring and poetry — Sor- 
rento, set like a jewel on the edge of the blue sea. 
When at last she lost consciousness, she had dreams 
of the bounteous Italian autumn, of its rosy oleanders 
and odorous daturas. 


CHAPTER XV. 


“the interregnum.” 



JASTBOURNE, in the very height of a full 
season, is a cheerful place, with its blue 
bright sea and its background of breezy 
downs. Isabel, temporarily free from those grinding 
money anxieties, and watching Randie’s rosy cheeks 
and Eay^s radiant delight in the treasures of the 
beach, was looking younger and happier than she 
had done for years past. 

Before a fortnight had slipped away, her eyes were 
bright, and, with a few rebellious curls escaping the 
bondage of the ugly hat, she looked and felt strangely 
like the Isabel Dale of old times. She used to go out 
on the shore for long, delightful mornings, taking 
lunch with her, and stitching industriously while 
the children plaj^ed tirelessly. It is easy enough to 
leave fashion behind. Smart people cling together 
as if they fear their own impotence unless they are 
united. 

Quite a little way from the big pier, with the vul- 
garity piers always engender, on the Pevensey side, 
259 


260 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


the beach is given up to a babies’ carnival. There 
the old saying, “Not Angles, but angels,” has a fresh 
meaning. 

Fay and Randie had plenty of playfellows. The 
haughtiest of nurses looked kindly on the little crip- 
ple as he limped after the merry bands of paddlers, 
while Fay was the capricious queen of any number 
of small boy-lovers. Bab Millington had made them 
her especial charges from their first meeting, and so 
it happened naturally enough that Beryl and Isabel 
were constantly thrown together. 

Isabel was glad not to be left too much to solitary 
reflection. Deep in her heart lay misgivings she 
tried to banish. The kind old people she was with 
helped her more than they knew. To them she was 
but a child herself, and they petted and made much 
of her, lavishing toys on Fay and Randie, who soon 
learned to love them. Adrian wrote but seldom, but 
gave a satisfactory report of himself, so she gratefully 
rested after her long days and nights of nursing. 

In spite of her stepmother’s angry disapproval of 
Mrs. Sarel, Beryl decided, with unwonted indepen- 
dence, that she liked her very much, and was only 
too pleased to sit sewing and talking beside her. She 
was so homesick that to see a Northbent face was a 
delight, and there was always the chance that Isabel 
might mention Harold Buchanan. If ever she did, 


INTERREGNUM. 


261 


it was with expressions of the sincerest gratitude for 
all his goodness during the time of the fever. 

It did not occur to Beryl to make confidences after 
the usual girlish fashion. She had a delicate reti- 
cence that is one of the rare and lovely qualities 
modern women are losing. That day in the copse 
she had felt so happy and so confident. Now she 
wondered she could have let such presumptuous 
hopes steal into her heart. But Isabel guessed her 
secret with a woman’s unfailing instinct, and loved 
Beryl all the more for the silence she herseK would 
have kept. 

One day she surprised her with tears in her eyes, 
sitting alone, hidden behind an old breakwater. 
She had a novel in her hands, and started when she 
saw who was coming. It was a cloudless afternoon, 
and the tide was flowing out, leaving a wet fringe of 
olive-brown seaweed on the shore and a touch of salt 
in the fresh air. The sea was almost white in the 
flashing sunlight, and the children’s laughter rang 
out sweetly as they ran about on their little, noiseless 
bare feet. 

“ Oh, it is you, Mrs. Sarel. Do sit down. It is so 
pleasant here,” Beryl exclaimed. 

“I thought for a moment you did not want me,” 
Isabel said with the shyness that sometimes made 
her awkward. 


262 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


“ Because I have been silly and cried over a book. 
At home I scarcely ever read a novel. There is so 
much mending and parish work to be done. Betty 
devours everything. She is very clever, and not a 
bit like me. Still, I very seldom cry over anything 
but real troubles. Have you read ‘The Interreg- 
num?’ It is about the saddest thing that can hap- 
pen. The girl loves some one, and he does not care 
for her, never cares for her.” 

“ The saddest thing that can happen ! How young 
she is, and how little she knows,” thought Adrian’s 
wife and Randle’s mother. 

“ I wonder if men in real life are much like novel 
heroes,” continued Beryl, looking wistfully over the 
golden water. “ This Julian Ferris made the hero- 
ine his friend, and then by -and -by he left her and 
almost forgot her. He just used her as one would a 
toy, till he found something that pleased him better. 
Read it — just this one chapter that has almost fright- 
ened me — and I will go and pin up Bab’s frock. She 
will get soaked if she goes into the water so 
far.” 

Isabel was not very fond of reading, and she had 
no sort of knowledge of novels of the new school. 
She obediently took the book and began the chapter, 
out of curiosity to read Beryl’s feelings between the 
lines. It shocked and pained her somewhat. 


THE INTERREGNUM. 


263 


“The Interregnum.” 

“Julian Ferris had been married nearly two years, 
but bis conscience still troubled him about the other 
girl. He had married rather beneath his intellectual 
level, and was already finding marriage, if not a fail- 
ure, at any rate different from the ideal vision his 
very brief moment of passion had held out to him as 
likely to be realized if he took the all-important step. 

“Yet he had not, as the phrase goes, behaved 
badly to the other girl, who was so different from the 
woman he had made his wife. No word of love had 
ever passed between them. They had not met so 
often that rumor hurried them into a decision as to 
the precise nature of their intercourse by coupling 
their names. It was quite impossible for Ferris to 
describe the significance of the link that connected 
them. Grace Merrick had learnt with bitter suffer- 
ing that it was her own unrequited love. 

“ Her secret was too well guarded to be even sur- 
mised by Ferris. Honest men are invariably blind 
in such cases. Ferris was a good fellow, somethiug 
too much absorbed in his own at that time not very 
prosperous fortunes, but better, on the whole, than 
the generality of clever men. He had met Grace 
Merrick at a time when his reserve was inclined to 


264 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


thaw. Her immediate tacit comprehension of some 
of his troubles, her friendly comradeship of ideas and 
ideals, insured her a quick entrance into the circle of 
intimates his critical nature made very narrow. 

“Grace was a novelist of some ability, but no 
genius. As long as she kept her books well within 
her own horizon they were pleasant enough to read. 
When she wandered afield she was far less success- 
ful. Ferris did not admire the novels as much as he 
liked the writer. He was not at all a woman’s man, 
and he thought the books feminine to weakness in 
parts, though he conceded a certain cultured nicety 
of phrase and delicacy of perception of the subtler 
shades of character. 

“ Outsiders had no conception of an intimacy she 
knew with aching certainty could never ripen into 
love. She was quite conscious that she merely filled 
the interregnum before some sudden passion should 
fiash into his heart and exclude all minor interests. 
But her professional ability to analyze the situation 
competently did not make it any easier to endure. 

“ Circumstance suddenly separated them decisively 
and permanently. Grace took up her broken life 
and tried to piece the edges together. She had 
schooled herself to be brave and reasonable, reminded 
herself that she gave all to receive nothing. She 
would have died rather than admit that Julian Ferris 


THE INTERREGNUM. 


265 


was in any way to blame. Yet he himself had mo- 
ments of compunction. He felt he had made use of 
her, and then thrust her aside when the void in his 
life was filled. 

“It was only after marriage had taught him, as 
he thought, to understand women, instead of, as a 
wiser man would have comprehended, to know a 
very little of one of them. Then it crossed his mind 
to wonder whether he had made a friend to fill a few 
solitary hours, and left a lonely spirit to struggle 
with a definite loss. 

“ He imagined there was no possible answer to the 
doubts that haunted him with increasing frequency 
when his allusions wore thin, until one day he took 
up a magazine in order to find something that might 
take him out of a not very contented self. 

“Then the veil was roughly rent. He was not 
consistent, for, while admitting that he owed Grace 
Merrick some reparation, he yet resented her taking 
it in the one way that was possible. 

“ Grace had gone through a trying period before 
she had flung her pent-up grief into the anonymous 
story that stung Ferris with a self-reproach he hated 
when certain signs assured him it was hers. She 
was a proud woman, and a self -contained. She could 
not have shaped her experiences into a novel with a 
glorified portrait of herself as the heroine. That is 


266 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


often done, and sometimes successfully, but not by 
Grace Merricks. Her suffering was all the keener 
that it had no glamour of romance about it, no bitter- 
sweet remembrance of broken vows or stolen kisses. 

“ It was not her own pain that had prompted this 
terse and matter-of-fact tale, told as she had never told 
the others that were mere children of her imagination. 
When she heard that Julian Ferris was married, her 
first emotion was a singular one. The news was 
brought her on a summer night, when all the earth 
was an Eden of silver-green moonlight. 

“After the first stunned wonder that this thing did 
not alter everything as it altered her own existence, 
she was filled with very passionate pity for the wo- 
men who were suffering as she was. Perhaps even 
more intensely, for she had had the preparation of 
many quiet hours of prospective renunciation, and 
until her hope lay dead before her, she had never 
admitted it existed. 

“ She had passed through those first hard wakings 
to the thought that the coming years must for her be 
barren of life’s fairest flowers. She bore without 
rebellion the crushing knowledge that, for the sake 
of those about her, she dared claim no leisure to be 
sorrowful, that henceforth she must toil along the 
straight road of clearly defined duty with only the 
possible solace of making it less toilsome for others. 


THE INTERREGNUM. 


267 


“It was a development of this thought that 
prompted her to write as she did ; an idea that grew 
to a conviction that if she frankly and unreservedly 
bared her own heart’s weakness, she might keep 
others from falling into a similar abyss. 

“ She had tried to take the man’s point of view, 
had entered into the need of friendship and com- 
panionship closer and more instinct with fine tact 
than a fellow-man can offer, that is experienced by 
those who do not waste their emotions on flirtations. 
She had insisted on the fact that this friendship is 
quite alien to love, and certain so to remain. She 
did. not censure men for enjoying such sympathy as 
they can command without further thought. She 
merely warned the women who are used as friends to 
beware how they accept the position. 

“ There was a restrained pathos about the story, an 
obvious effort to express in phrase of absolute clear- 
ness and simplicity those complex experiences and 
feelings that are so difficult to clothe in exact 
words. ' 

“It was a hard moment for Julian Ferris. He 
now felt for the first time that Grace had been the 
prelude to a more exciting episode. She had taught 
him not a little about her own sex, so that when he 
had wooed his wife he had done so with advantages, 
and now she had exacted payment for her services. 


268 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


Could she have loved him? Were the tranquil-seem- 
ing eyes that so rarely met his own on fire with a 
love that was in vain? 

“She had passed out of his life utterly. There 
was the present, with its daily routine, to be faced. 
There was the absorbing interest of his profession. 
There were compensations enough for the lost friend- 
ship. 

“ But his self-respect was wounded. A momentary 
idea of writing to Grace he dismissed contemptu- 
ously. What could he ask? What could he say? 
He stood looking thoughtfully at the fire. He felt ’as 
if he had been through the valley of humiliation. 
He sent up an urgent petition that Grace Merrick 
might never cross his path. The prayer has been 
answered. His punishment had been sufficient.” 

Beryl came back, and watched Isabel curiously 
until she had put down the book. 

“What do you think of it?” she asked after a 
pause. 

“I think Ferris must have been a poor creature 
enough.” Isabel spoke decisively. “ Still, I couldn’t 
like a woman who wrote in that way.” 

“Then you fancy such things do not happen often? 
I should die if it happened to me.” 

Isabel put her arms round her and kissed her, as if 
she had been a loving elder sister. “ My dear, I am 


THE INTERREGNUM. 


269 


sure that a very great happiness is waiting for you 
in the future.” 

Beryl returned the kiss warmly, and was com- 
forted, though they said nothing more just then. 

Isabel was right, but the future was a joyous pres- 
ent. There v/as a letter in Beryl’s room when she 
went to it that evening. It was not very long, but 
when she had read it she flung herself upon her knees 
before the open window and looked up to the star- 
strewn d a r k ness. 

“ Mother, darling mother, can you look down and 
see your happy Beryl?” 


CHAPTER XVI. 


THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 



JHE news of Beryl’s engagement touched very 
keenly the two women who felt that for them 
life had no more illusions. Isabel was glad 
that it should be. She was always glad of any tan- 
gible sign that there were true and beautiful things 
in life. Her interest in the two young lovers took 
her back to the sunny meadows round Lucerne where 
she had walked with Adrian. He had loved her 
then. She too had been in the Paradise that so 
swiftly changed Beryl from a child into a woman. 

It is very seldom that a girl marries her first love. 
Isabel had done so, and it was characteristic that she 
should find pleasure in drawing a parallel between 
herself and Beryl. She drew no parallels between 
Adrian and Harold Buchanan. She put her hus- 
band on a pedestal too far above the world for this. 

But she was happier for their happiness. It is 
only the very best of us who can rejoice with those 
that do rejoice. It is so much easier to sorrow with 

the sad than to sit in the shadow without envying 
270 


THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 


271 


those in the glad sunshine. Isabel could do both 
with the same serene spirit, and until Beryl’s return, 
with its shy delight of meeting and its trying cross- 
questionings from Mrs. Millington, she made a very 
sympathetic confidante. 

It had not been easy for her to keep her former 
aspect of perfect contentment. Mrs. Millington’s 
letter fell like a thunderbolt from the blue. She 
guessed whose hand had written it, and even found 
a forlorn comfort in remembering how boldly she 
had denied the first allegations brought against her 
husband. 

The paper itself she burnt, with earnest prayers 
that she might still believe in Adrian’s faith. “ Let 
me not even wrong him in my thoughts,” she im- 
plored pitifully, and from her heart arose the familiar 
words we cannot improve upon, “ Lead him not into 
temptation.” 

She could seek no sympathy, ask no human com- 
fort, no reassurance against the doubts and fears that 
mustered thickly round her. Only when Handle’s 
evening prayer was said, she felt as if the child’s in- 
nocent intercession was a talisman of safety for the 
absent father. She shared the tender belief with 
many another mother that there was a special power 
in those simple invocations. The golden-headed 
children are so much fresher from heaven that they 


272 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


may well know best how to make themselves under- 
stood there, where there is neither speech nor lan- 
guage. 

To Philippa, the restless, unquiet slave of a pas- 
sion against which she had never even for a moment 
struggled, the sight of the shy, conscious Beryl 
brought a dull stab of pain. In that new world she 
would fain enter, there could be no place for these 
simple idyls. 

Just a little while, and honest men and women 
might have no more part or lot with her. The dull, 
humdrum people she had despised, could she then care 
for their opinion? She hated the knowledge that 
even yet she could smart at the idea that she would 
be scorned. What? Could the chance meeting with 
this utterly commonplace pair waken such sensations? 
Love and art, art and love, for ever. That was to 
be her creed. Could she not freely do sacrifice for 
them? 

She might wince at her own weakness, but it was 
there, just as it had been on that far-away day when 
she had received the news of her fortune and saved 
the life of Fay Sarel. To that episode, in all her 
conversations with Adrian, she had never alluded. 
She had feared Fay as the most dangerous rival, and 
had secretly rejoiced to find that of late her father 
never spoke of her. 


THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 273 

She had kept to her refusal to leave home, and as 
Buchanan had been to Eastbourne for a few days, 
she had no difficulty in fulfilling her promise to 
Adrian. The weather had been broken, and Arthur 
unable to take his drives regularly. Everything had 
been in her favor. 

The picture progressed, but scarcely as rapidly as 
she had expected. Each time she stole down to Let- 
tice Close she had fresh proof that without her he 
could do nothing. The little work he accomplished 
in the intervals between her visits was strangely 
erratic and poor in character. 

Once she was startled to find a great serpent lying 
coiled with a painful realism in the foreground of the 
picture. 

“ It haunted me until I got up and painted it there,” 
Adrian said sombrely. 

“ You are not well. You are working too hard and 
thinking too much, or you would not have such fear- 
ful ideas.” 

Philippa was posing as patiently as ever, with her 
hair all in confusion. 

“This life is killing me,” he said quite suddenly, 
flinging down his palette and brushes. “I am 
changed. I cannot sleep, or, if I sleep, my dreams 
are worse than waking. I can never cease thinking 

of Sister Helen, and the words of the poem ring in 
18 


274 


THE POWER OF THE DOQ. 


my ears like a death-knell. I shall never succeed. 
I am no genius, only a disappointed painter un- 
worthy of his art, as I have always said.” 

He had spoken in this wild way more than once, 
but this time Philippa could resist no longer' “I 
believe in you. I know you better than you know 
yourself. See, I, who was so proud, can kneel here 

gladly as your model. If I left you ” 

If you left me I should cut the picture to pieces 
as I did ‘Medea.’ I cannot touch it except to ruin it 
unless you are beside me.” 

There was no faintest touch of tenderness in his 
despairing tones, yet Philippa, woman-like, merely 
drank in the words that were so precious. She put 
her white hand on his arm, and looked up pleadingly 
in his face. “ Let us go away to Italy and forget all 
the sad past. We are miserable. You are depriving 
the world of a great artist by wasting your time 
here.” 

For days past Adrian’s brain had been strangely 
clouded. The night he had said good-by to Alla- 
ronde, white thoughts of his wife and little children 
had come into his heart like guardian angels. There 
was no one to recall Isabel’s name and sacred rights 
now. He was altogether reckless. The past was 
dead, the present dark with failure and baffled am- 
bition. He could never go back to the old life, with 


THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 275 

its small, tiresome restrictions, its poverty and its 
struggle. She was right. If she were with him, 
the old power, nay, a new spirit, would be his. 

She was very beautiful as she knelt there pleading, 
but it was not her beauty that forced his answer, 
spoken almost fiercely ; rather the ache of his own 
weary dissatisfaction. “ I will come. We will be 
together always.” 

“ Can it be possible you have learnt at last to love 
me, Adrian?” 

The soft words, breathed in such an ecstasy, 
sounded vague and far away, echoes of a past with 
which he had now no part or lot. No saving mem- 
ory of the blue lake at Lucerne and the blue eyes, 
like forget-me-nots, that had looked shyly into his 
own, blessed him at this supreme moment. 

He looked down at Philippa, and there was a fire 
in his glance that she mistook for dawning passion. 

I cannot live without you. Call it what name you 
like, enchantress.” 

“ I must go now,” whispered Philippa after a few 
moments, “but I will make arrangements. It must 
be very soon. We will go to Naples and finish ‘Sis- 
ter Helen.’” 

“Your wishes are my laws.” The words, but not 
the tone, had eagerness in them ; but she was amply 
contented. 


276 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


“We can go on Monday. There is no train to- 
morrow. It must be late or else it may be difficult. 
If you could come to Allaronde at twelve that night, 
I would be ready.” 

“At twelve on Monday I will be there,” he re- 
peated mechanically. 

Her victory had been won, and as she went home 
swiftly in the dusk she magnified Adrian into a hero 
and his few words into magic. “ When women love 
they are all alike,” Adrian had said so long ago. 
Philippa’s clear intellect and power of reasoning ab- 
solutely deserted her at this crisis. She had always 
considered herself governed by the same moral law 
as other people of mind. Now it never even occurred 
to her that she had drifted quite away from any gov- 
erning principle. Her soul was like a rudderless 
boat, floating at the caprice of the waves. 

It is so easy to plan where money is no object. 
Before she reached home she had arranged it all with 
a practical attention to detail that had something 
really curious in it. 

After dinner she played a medley of Neapolitan 
boat songs softly, whilst Arthur lay and listened. 
He had absolutely no suspicion of his wife. To him 
she was above it, for he loved her. 

Lettice Close was in sharper contrast than ever to 
Allaronde, with its lights, its flowers, and its luxury. 


THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 2117 

It was Saturday, and after paying his attendant her 
wages, Sarel told her, to her astonishment, that he 
should no longer require her services. He had done 
so very quietly, and had even added that he had 
been quite satisfied, but that he was going away, 
probably the next day, and meant to lock up the 
house. 

Then he went back to the forlorn studio, dimly 
lighted by one lamp. He stood before his picture, as 
he had stood so often previously, and this time, to his 
disordered vision, an awful thing befell. 

In the utter silence and loneliness, and with only a 
dull wind sobbing outside the wet window panes, it 
seemed that Sister Helen stepped out of the canvas 
and touched him with her death-cold hand. Like 
Philippa, and yet so unlike. 

He remembered nothing, thought of nothing, only 
waited with the blood freezing in his veins, to hear a 
faint, far-away voice come from those pale lips. It 
came : “ A soul that is lost as mine is lost.” 

“I must be mad,” he murmured brokenly, ‘^mad.” 

As mine is lost.” He could not doubt the evi- 
dence of his own senses. 

“What have I done?” He spoke to the phantom 
of his own disordered brain, and it refused to obey 
him. 

Everything was blotted out. Past, future, were 


278 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


all merged in a hideous present with an overwhelm- 
ing sense of guilt. He shuddered. The phantom 
never moved, but stood pointing at him, always 
repeating those awful words. 

No one has ever been able to describe accurately 
the beginning of madness. It is merciful, for to 
read of those torments might well unhinge reason 
itself. Only Shakespeare, perhaps, in “Lear,” gave 
us some faint insight into the shadowy world peopled 
with ghastly spirits and delusions. 

This man had sworn to forget his honor and his 
duty. Retribution speedy and terrible was to keep 
him from the broad way of destruction. He would 
never now go to those lands of summer sunshine. 
He would never complete the picture that had cost 
such a price. 

“A soul that is lost as mine is lost.” 

He could bear it no longer. Just for a second, 
truant memory showed him that other night when 
“ Medea” had stood out pale in the moonlight. Sis- 
ter Helen should speak no more, torment him no 
more, haunt him no more. 

Again and again he took up a palette knife and 
approached the picture. The phantom never moved. 
Again, and yet once more, resolution failed him 
utterly. 

At last he made a final attempt, and in a moment 


THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 


m 


the patient work of all those many days, the hope of 
two hearts, was ruined and unrecognizable. Gone 
the stately figure, gone the glowing fiames, the deep, 
deep eyes. 

There was a large glass goblet of water on the 
table near him. A cool draught might give him 
strength, might restore his wandering brain, that 
seemed beyond his control. He seized it, to let it 
crash down into a hundred fragments a moment 
later. He could not drink. Nature interposed some 
strange, terrible barrier between himself and the ful- 
filment of his craving. Did he guess what fate had 
befallen him? 

A sort of paroxysm succeeded the work of destruc- 
tion, and when the gray dawn stole in at the win- 
dows it lighted the wild eyes of a madman. Kismet 
had died too late, after all. 

When the church bells were ringing for the early 
service, and a sunnj^ calm was brooding over North- 
bent, a terrified postman who had been to Lettice 
Close brought the news to Harold Buchanan, who, 
always an early riser, was loitering in his little 
garden. 

He took a sovereign out of his pocket. “ I will 
give you this if you will say nothing to any one of 
what you have seen, or think you have seen.” 


280 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


The postman, who was naturally taciturn, took the 
money and promised silence. 

Buchanan hastily wrote three or four telegrams. 
He should want help immediately if it were true. 

Ten minutes later he was alone in the presence of 
a maniac too weak with the frantic struggle of the 
night to be dangerous at the moment. He was quite 
calm and fearless. The scientist in him mercifully 
held the man in check. 

He gave the telegrams to a lad who chanced to be 
passing, and when the church bells were ringing out 
again two medical friends he could trust were with 
him. 

The two hours he had spent alone held experiences 
of which he never spoke. But all his life he never 
lost a hatred of the sound of bells. He knew he was 
in some danger, but he had plenty of the cool cour- 
age that can wait and watch as well as act. We 
praise the valor of the brave soldier or sailor leading 
a forlorn hope, but such deeds as these are done every 
day without fame or reward. 

From Adrian’s ravings, he knew that he and Phil- 
ippa were closely bound together by a bond he did 
not wholly understand. So poor Isabel, to whom he 
had merely sent a message that her husband was ill, 
was but at the beginnng of her troubles. Noticing a 
time-table, he saw there was but one train, early in 


THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 281 

the afternoon, by which she could come. Some one 
must meet her and tell her. 

Sitting beside the bed, he wrote to Beryl. He had 
never written since that first letter, and he did so 
now very tenderly. The thought of the girl kneeling 
quietly in the cool, gray church had haunted him. 
He recalled to her the day he had shot the dog, and 
asked her to meet Isabel and break the cruel truth as 
gently as might be. “ Tell your father and Betty, if 
you wish; not the others.” 

So Beryl told her father, and sped upon her mis- 
sion pale and trembling. Betty was silent, but 
dauntless as ever, proud to be trusted. 

Mrs. Millington was angry and surprised when 
her husband told her that he had sent the girls to the 
station to meet Mrs. Sarel, whose husband was dan- 
gerously ill. He did so in that rare tone of authority 
she dared not gainsay, for he had been roused out of 
his dreaminess by this sudden horror in their midst, 
and by Beryl’s tears and sweet, sympathetic readi- 
ness to accept her hard office. 

No one except Mrs. Millington guessed to whom 
he referred in the afternoon service : “ Your prayers 
are desired for members of this congregation in great 
trouble.” 

She was not a bad woman, and she would very 
gladly have recalled the letter she had written. 


282 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


though she still justified herself with the old formula 
of her duty as the wife of the vicar, and by the reso- 
lution that she would send some grapes to Lettice 
Close to-morrow. There is a grim irony in the cheap 
way some people try to condone their own sins. 

Betty left her sister with Isabel, and went home 
marvelling a little that Beryl, who feared a mouse or 
a spider, could be so calm and composed. When she 
got back the service was over, and, much to her sur- 
prise, she heard her father call her into the study and 
close the door. 

“You left them together? Was my good little 
Beryl frightened?” he asked anxiously. 

“ No, father. Berry can be very brave. She just 
kissed Mrs. Sarel, and then I left them. I believe if 
Harold told her to be burnt alive she would go with- 
out a word.” 

“You think she loves him very dearly?” said the 
vicar almost timidly. 

“ I know it, father. Berry is the best and truest 
girl in all the world.” 

For the first time another thought came to the 
father who had perhaps cared more for his Greek 
manuscripts than for his daughters. “You will 
miss her, Betty, when she goes away.” 

Betty’s eyes glittered, but she fought back the tears 
that were so rare with her. “ It will be dreadful for 


THE BEGINNING OF THE END, 283 

me, but she shall never know,” she said with resolu- 
tion. “Father, I can’t do it, I know, but I will try, 
oh, I will, to take her place.” 

Mr. Millington was deeply touched. Rough Betty 
he had never understood, and her utter unlikeness to 
her mother had made her almost unattractive to him ; 
but he saw that here too a loving womanly heart was 
beating. 

He bent over and kissed her warmly. “ I am very 
glad I am to have another right hand.” 

The keen, honest gray eyes that were Betty’s one 
beauty brightened. “I shall try so hard, father. 
And there is something else. I am teaching myself 
Greek, and I can write it a little — only a little. If 
3^ou would help me sometimes.” 

The vicar fetched a shabby Greek Testament 
without a word. “ My dear, I will give you a lesson 
now. We want something to occupy our thoughts.” 

So it came to pass that the eager teacher and 
learner forgot all the sorrow and suffering so patheti- 
cally near as they forged the first links in a chain 
that bound them very closely in the after years. 

Beryl slipped upstairs when she at last returned, 
and flung herself down upon her bed. She thought 
she could never forget the white, set face and tearless 
eyes of Isabel Sarel when she had heard the whole 
story, and known the end of all her hopes and fears. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

DARKNESS AND DAWN. 


HILIPPA had made every preparation for 
her flight, and she had kissed her husband 
before he went to bed, not quite without a 
spark of pity or remorse. She waited for Adrian in 
the north drawing-room, peopled as it was with her 
associations with him, with an eagerness that made 
the minutes drag. 

Everything favored her. It was a wild, dark 
night. The trees bent and wailed in the high au- 
tumnal wind as if they knew and dreaded the com- 
ing of the inevitable winter. He was to come at 
midnight, and to open the French window and slip 
out into the wood could not but be easy. Once there, 
they would go to the station, catch the last train to 
London, and sail for Naples next day. 

She had no compunction, no doubt, no fear save 
that faint, unacknowledged question whether Adrian 
would ever love her as she loved him. She looked 
back on her past with self-pity. It was cold and 

dead indeed, compared with this passionate present. 

284 




DARKNESS AND DAWN 


285 


What should she lose that would weigh in the scale 
with her gain? 

She remembered, and smiled to remember, that 
once before a fear of what that world might say had 
actually restrained her from action. She had not 
loved then. She had had no idea how that one fact 
could revolutionize. She had read and thought of 
love so incessantly that her heart only needed the 
merest touch to be on fire. 

She had changed her evening silks for a thick 
black dress; a fur-lined cloak, hat, and veil lying 
beside her in readiness. A dozen times she went to 
the window in fancied answer to the signal, to find 
it was only the long arms of the roses tapping and 
beckoning. The leaves, already blown down in 
thousands by the tempestuous gale, rustled crisply 
along the dry, hard paths. 

The air was full of sound, and every sound a mys- 
tery and a question. The holy silence of a peaceful 
night was altogether absent. It was weather for a 
witches’ Sabbath. It excited Philippa. She liked 
the high, warm wind, and thought how soon it would 
be cooling her flushed cheeks. 

She had never been more queenly or more beauti- 
ful than now, stripped of every ornament, every dia- 
mond, that Arthur had given her. Stay, though, 
she had forgotten those that twinkled in her ears. 


286 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


She took them out and threw them aside contemptu- 
ously. They mattered nothing to her. Nothing 
mattered any more except love and art. 

She told herself repeatedly that she was obeying a 
very noble impulse. Adrian Sarel was a great artist, 
a genius, and was he to be cramped for the sake of a 
few miserable conventionalities? He must learn to 
love her utterly. She had flung herself and her for- 
tune at his feet. Isabel? She smiled at the mirror 
which echoed her own triumphant assurance. 

Twelve rich, musical strokes sounded from the 
clock tower. She had liked to invest the flight with 
every possible circumstance of romance, although 
she would have been ashamed enough to own such a 
weakness. He was late. He should have been wait- 
ing, watching, expectant. She counted the very sec- 
onds until flve, ten, fifteen minutes had passed, very 
wearily, very impatiently. Supposing they missed 
the train? Her cheeks burnt, and again she listened 
attentively. 

Yes, there were light footsteps at last; there was 
no doubt of it. Her courage and her reckless joy 
came back, and she threw the wide windows open 
with a little, soft, glad exclamation. 

Then she stood still, petrified with a surprise that 
in one moment grew to terror. It was Isabel, not 
Adrian Sarel, who stood before her, white and wide- 


DABKNESS AND DAWN. 


287 


eyed and wet with the rain. Her hat had slipped 
back, and hung upon her shoulders. A crimson 
shawl, huddled round them, only accentuated her 
deathly pallor. 

There was a silence between them, and then Phil- 
ippa spoke in a voice that did not sound like her own, 
weighted with a vague foreboding that something 
terrible had brought her into the presence of the 
woman she had wronged. 

“You, Mrs. Sarel?” 

They seemed to have changed places, for when 
Isabel answered her there was no fear, no hesitation 
in the clear, firm voice. The shawl slipped down, 
and revealed her slight figure in its shabby dress. 
She had a new dignity, the dignity of conscious right 
in the presence of shame. 

“ I know all,” she began quietly, as Philippa’s eyes 
fell before her. “You expected Adrian to-night. 
You meant to leave your husband ; he, me and his 
little, helpless children. I have not come to reproach 
you, but to tell you that he will never come and that 
you can never go.” 

“Then he— is — dead?” hissed out Philippa, over- 
mastered by her. dread. 

Still quite calmly, quite firmly, Isabel went on. 
“ It is far worse. He is mad.” 


“ It is not true.' 


288 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


true?” cried Isabel brokenly. “Not true? 
I tell you that Adrian Sarel, my husband and your 
lover, is lying at death’s door, a maniac. A dog bit 
him — your own dog — and he is mad. O God, that 
he were in his grave ! They tell me he will die soon, 
but he raves of Philippa, Philippa, until I could not 
bear to hear the name. I have learnt to hate. He 
has been talking of you, and of a new life in Naples, 
and of the picture, always the picture. He might, 
perhaps, be calmer for a moment if he saw you be- 
side him. I have come here to fetch you, as he could 
not come himself.” 

Philippa shrank from her, trembling in every 
limb. “I cannot. I dare not,” she murmured, hid- 
ing her terror-stricken face in her hands. 

“ You dare not?” 

The scorn in Isabel’s voice stung the proud woman 
beside her unendurably . Yet no humiliation equalled 
the physical cowardice that made the thought of see- 
ing Adrian a nightmare. She remembered the little 
scar she had noticed upon his wrist. It all flitted 
across her brain in a few seconds. 

She was powerless to retort. No falsehood even 
seemed possible with these stern blue eyes fixed upon 
her. She could not string together any kind of de- 
nial. There are times when the most accomplished 
liar is silenced in the presence of truth. 


DAEKNESS AND DAWN. 


289 


An hour ago she had been jubilant with trium- 
phant anticipation. Now she was conscious of no 
sentiment but a craven fear. Not even regret; that 
would come afterward, when the first hideous im- 
pression was no longer paramount. 

“ I cannot,” she reiterated, “ I cannot. How can 
you bear to witness such horrors, to be with him 
when — ” She stopped short. 

All the scorn had vanished when Isabel answered, 
with a conviction there was no gainsaying, a calm 
despair that was well-nigh sublime, “ Because I am 
his wife. He does not love me any more, but I am 
his wife, the mother of his children. That tie can- 
not be broken. God joined us. Any othef union 
would snap asunder in an instant in such a Inoment 
as this. What does your love do for you ? It teaches 
you to break my heart, to ruin my home ; but when 
the shadow of death falls, then it is his wife who 
alone can dare to face it with him. God gives me 
strength to drink even this cup. I knew, I knew for 
weeks past, that he was being drawn away from me, 
and I prayed so that he might not leave me desolate 
and that he might not sin. My prayer is answered. 
He will not leave me till he is dead. He is given 
back to me at this last dreadful hour, and though he 
does not know me, does not love me, he is still my 
husband. I would die a thousand deaths to give 
19 


290 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


him a little ease. I think my coming to you proves 
that.” 

“ I cannot, I cannot come. I cannot even ask you 
to forgive me; I have no right,” murmured Philippa. 
“ But there is one word I must say. I tempted him, 
and, before God, I believe it was more for his art’s 
sake than for mine he yielded. I knew even to-night 
that I had not won his heart. I thought I might 
win it, but it was never mine. Ah, it costs me an- 
guish to make the confession, and yet you force me 
to it. You love him. Pity me a little because I 
loved him also. I was all on fire. I could not leave 
him to you. I thought you did not greatly care.” 

‘‘You thought I did not care? Adrian, Adrian, 
my one lover, my husband, what could I have done 
for you that I did not do? I was unworthy of you — 
only a poor, ignorant girl — but I did my best, and 
he will never know.” 

The agony of that cry rang in Philippa’s ears a 
thousand times in after life. 

Then, suddenly, a light came into Isabel’s eyes. 
The mere idea that, after all, he had not deserted her 
quite without a struggle brought a warm ray of com- 
fort. She was lifted up to a height altogether above 
the common plane. She was clinging too desperately 
to hesitate to the Cross that shone as the only beacon 
in her darkness. She held out her hand. This 


DARKNESS AND DAWN 


291 


weeping, despairing, fearful woman was no longer 
the Philippa she had dreaded and hated. 

“ I must go back,” she said, “ and if he is conscious 
again, I must tell him you cannot come.” 

“ If he is conscious, it is to you he will turn. It 
was in his madness he yielded to me,” said Philippa 
brokenly. I am not fit to take your hand. I have 
sinned too blackly against you and yours. There 
can be no pardon.” 

“ God will forgive you, as I do, freely, willingly. 
We have not been happy, but at least my husband 
loved me once, as your husband loves you now. Oh, 
go back to him. It is not yet too late. Be thankful 
for the safe shelter of your home and his love. You 
may retrieve your past. You may yet be at peace. 
He need never know. You have your work left to 
do, and I my little children to live for. No one is 
ever utterly bereaved. God is too good.” 

“You can say that still? Can your religion work 
such miracles? You can forgive me, you can be 
resigned, even calm.” 

“All things are possible with God.” 

Philippa sank back upon the sofa, shaken by a 
storm of wild weeping. 

“ I must not stay. He may need me. Pray for 
us; pray for me. And, remember, I forgive you.” 

Isabel went out, leaving Philippa stunned. All 


292 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


her life lay shattered before her like a broken glass. 
Isabel’s forgiveness had laid low her pride, but those 
who all their years have thrust religion aside as 
forming no part in the scheme of things cannot in a 
moment find any comfort there. 

She went to her room. There, upon the dressing- 
table, lay the sealed letter for her husband. She 
glanced round at this room she had thought never to 
see again. Adrian mad, dying? It could not be. 
Such a little while since she had laid down that let- 
ter; such a great gulf opening now at her very feet. 
It was horrible, horrible, to be alone with only ghastly 
visions of the man she had loved to keep her awful 
company. 

She seized the letter and burnt it in the flickering 
candle. It would no more be needed. That dream- 
life in a land of sunshine and roses was never to be. 
She sat down white and shivering with fear. Oh 
for some warm, friendly hand to clasp her own, for 
some tender voice to comfort her. 

Isabel had rent the veil. She saw now what sin 
meant. There was one stern text that came to her 
pale lips — “The wages of sin is death.” She dared 
not face Adrian with the fire of madness in his eyes. 
Could she dare to pass into the other world that all 
at once became a reality? 

Sudden conversions do not happen with souls like 


DARKNESS AND DAWN 


293 


Philippa’s. She could not in a moment catch the 
reflex of the faith that upheld Isabel, the exaltation 
that changed the simple, quiet girl to a heroine. 
The first hard step in the path of right she had in- 
deed taken. She had confessed the truth. But that 
confession brought no alleviation. 

Something of the real nature of the sin she had 
committed, the sin from which she had been saved, 
overcame her with a shuddering sense of guilt. 

For the first time, stripped of all shams, she looked 
into her heart. 

The cold, pale dawn found her still keeping vigil. 
For hours she was verily in the place of torment. 
Shifting pictures haunted her of what might be hap- 
pening, what must be before long ; of that dreadful 
visitant who had all abruptly claimed her place and 
her lover. Would death come without any moment 
of consciousness or instant of preparation? The 
miserable woman who dared not, could not, pray for 
herself, sank on her knees trembling. “ If there be 
indeed any to hear, let him know his wife once 
again.” 

If God only heard the prayers of the saints, there 
would be few enough answered. Philippa, groping 
blindly in the gloom, was not altogether lost. By- 
and-by she slept from sheer exhaustion, but her 
prayer had been answered. 


294 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


As the day broke gray and stormy, Isabel knelt by 
the bedside of her husband, but though there was 
a momentary interval of consciousness Buchanan 
dared not leave her alone with Adrian. 

“You must not ask that,” he said v/ith compas- 
sionate firmness, though he motioned the other doctor 
who had been summoned to the other room. 

It made her realize that the horror of it all was not 
a fearful dream. That such a sacred parting should 
perforce be shared by another gave it an added 
pang. 

Buchanan never forgot the wonderful expression of 
her face. He, who denied the existence of angels, 
mentally likened her to one of those ministering 
spirits in her purit}^ and her grief. 

Adrian knew^ her, and there was gladness in the 
recognition that for a brief period extinguished the 
madness in his eyes. 

“Adrian, I have been to Philippa. She cannot 
come to you.” 

The clear, musical voice, so familiar in its low 
sweetness, helped to bring back a gleam of memory, 
or perhaps only the actual present had reality for him. 

“My dear wife, I only want you. It is heaven 
where you are.” 

“Not where I am, but where you will be soon. 
God is very merciful. He did not let you sin. Can 


DARKNESS AND DAWN. 


295 


you not say one prayer, only one word, to let me 
know that even now you can think of Him?” 

The lovely, calm face of the Madonna that had 
comforted Isabel before looked down as if in pity on 
the man who was dying with so little that was noble 
to leave as a remembrance. His eyes sought the 
picture again and again, but he could not speak. 

And Isabel prayed aloud, with a fervor, a despair, 
as if she would fain force open the very doors of 
heaven for the man she had so loved. The valley of 
death was shadowy here, and dim with the horror 
and pain of the most hideous of all diseases that sever 
body and spirit. 

She had no fear. The frail girl who had shrunk 
from the water where her child struggled was lost 
in the brave woman, ready to bear her husband com- 
pany as far on his last terrible journey as was possi- 
ble. The fervent prayer of the righteous avails so 
much. Who shall dare to say what it may have 
done to blot out the remembrance of many shortcom- 
ings in the divine eyes that are so far more merciful 
than our own? 

There were no tears for Isabel. She gazed upon 
her dying husband as if she were loth to lose sight of 
him for even a second of these precious minutes 
when he was all hers. The time was very short. 

Fearing another paroxysm, Buchanan genlty took 


296 


THE POWER OF THE DOQ. 


her hand. “You must leave him now, Mrs. Sarel, 
for a little while.” 

“ A little while? For ever — on this earth.” 

She flung her arm around Adrian’s neck and 
kissed him passionately. “ Mine now, and mine in 
heaven, where we shall meet.” 

She saw he knew her no more, and sank back into 
a merciful unconsciousness. 

“ It is all over. He is in peace at last.” It seemed 
to her as if but a moment had elapsed when these 
words fell upon her ears. 

But they were not spoken by Buchanan. He had 
known the end was likely to come in the early morn- 
ing, and had asked Beryl to be at Lettice Close as 
early as was possible. She had slipped out at five 
o’clock, proud that her lover should have confidence 
in her courage. She had no fear where he was. 

Buchanan meet her at the door. “ He is dead,” he 
said quietly, as he kissed her. “After such a night 
as this, to see you brings one back to life again. I 
am asking a hard service of you, little one — to go to 
that poor woman ; but she is so desolate, and when 
she rouses we must tell her.” 

“ I can feel for her now that we love each other.” 

Not the first shy avowal was half as sweet as that 
tender implication that as the dead man had been to 
Isabel, so was he to her. There was nothing incon- 


DARKNESS AND DAWN 


297 


gruous in this little, unwitnessed love scene. The 
sweetest thing in life is that such flowers blossom 
along its path so unexpectedly, so richly. Love and 
sorrow are twins, after all, and never far apart. 

So it came to pass that it was Beryl who clung 
weeping to Isabel with such a tender compassion that 
the merciful tears soon came to her relief. Beryl 
had not many words. She did not try to console 
where consolation was impossible. She could only 
feel with her. It was enough. 

Envoi. 

And so the tale is told. To Philippa, to Isabel, it 
seemed as if life must end for them as it had ended 
for Adrian on that wild night of despair. 

But time is very kind, and something so like hap- 
piness that it was more than content came back to 
the wife of the artist who had failed. Living quietly 
at Eastbourne, devoting her days to her children, she 
can think with calmness of the stormy past. Her 
beauty came back to her, with a new dignity, and 
there were those who would have loved her if they 
had not seen that all her heart was centred in 
Adrian’s little son and daughter. 

Once, long after, she met Philippa standing mus- 
ing beside the grave of him they had both loved. 


298 


THE POWER OF THE DOG. 


She learnt then that she had not altogether failed to 
touch that proud spirit. 

Arthur Farrant never knew. If he guessed, he 
made no sign, and sometimes he almost fancies his 
wife is learning to care for him. 

Sweet Beryl is a happy mother, with a wonderful 
baby Alice very dear to her grandfather, who likes 
to slip away to her breezy home on the Yorkshire 
moors with his devoted companion, Betty. For 
Betty kept her word, and took her sister’s place. 

Mrs. Millington is more boastful than ever since 
Betty’s first novel ran the gauntlet of the reviews 
with flying colors, though she had thrown buckets of 
cold water on its publication, and prophesied dire 
disasters. Her second step-daughter keeps her in 
check, and, so far, all her efforts to find a husband 
for the rising authoress are a failure. 

Betty is very happy in her career, and very fortu- 
nate, though Harold Buchanan complains he is quite 
tired of playing jeune premier in her dramas. 

“ You and Beryl taught me how people made love, 
so I don’t need to learn for myself,” she says saucily, 
and the rest of the family echo her opinion thank- 
fully. 







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